Touch
by Anidori-Kiladra
Summary: "I wish that Xander Harris never again knows the touch of a woman!" A fic exploring what would happen if one of Cordelia's wishes at the end of "The Wish" actually came true. Eventual Xander/Andrew. Now with a hint of Xander/Dracula and a dash of Xander/Spike!
1. In Which A Wish Is Granted

"I wish that Xander Harris never again knows the touch of a woman!" Cordelia said gleefully, sentencing Xander to a life of misery filled with constant and eternal torment.

Or at least, that was what Xander imagined happened. He wasn't actually around to hear it, sitting blissfully with Willow and Buffy a few hundred yards away across the courtyard, unaware that his life was about to become awful forever.

His first hint came not five minutes later, when they decided to hit the Bronze (totally deserved, for having saved the world _yet again_ yesterday), and when he offered Willow a hand to help her up, some force zinged right through it and pushed it back behind his head.

"Practicing your moves, Xander?" Buffy said, smiling that biting-back smile she used whenever she thought she was being particularly punny. "Because that just about moved me to tears. And not the good kind."

"Haha," Xander said. "I'm not sure what just happened. It was like some _force_ was keeping me from touching Will."

At that, Buffy frowned. "You'd think the powers of darkness would give us a day or so to recoup before they hit again, wouldn't you." She sighed. "I guess not. Well, now there's all the more reason to hit the Bronze before something super sinister hits _us_."

Later, Xander would look back on that first day and wonder how he could have been so stupid, and also be slightly embarrassed by the lack of female contact that allowed him to overlook the development of disaster for so long. But that day, the Bronze was just as Bronze-y and dance-y as usual, and Xander was able to forget about the weird zing that left his arm feeling like it did after you hit your elbow really hard, like any moment it might just pop right off.

Not for long though, because the next morning it happened again when he slipped on some spilled something-he-didn't-want-to-look-too-closely-at in the cafeteria and fell into a tiny freshman, who didn't even try to move out of his way as he timber-ed toward her.

But it turned out she didn't need to, because before he could hit her, Xander's whole body tipped back upright, like he was some sort of reverse pendulum, and he stumbled backwards.

Larry caught him. "You okay, Harris?" he asked, smiling genially and cradling Xander under the armpits.

"Yeah, yeah, fine," Xander said hurriedly. "Thanks, Larry."

Then again in math, when he borrowed a pencil from the girl who sat next to him and, the moment their fingers almost brushed, found his hand flying across to the other side of his desk, barely managing to keep hold of the pencil.

"Something weird is definitely going on," he announced, dropping his backpack on the table in the library after school.

Giles and Willow looked up from perusing a dusty looking book and the desktop computer, respectively, and stared at him, and it was only then that Xander realized that he was breathing heavily and unconsciously flexing his fingers, as if readying himself for them to fly around of their own volition again.

"What is it, Xander?" Giles asked hesitantly. "And would you like to sit down? Take deep breaths, perhaps?"

"No, I would not," Xander said. "But I would like you to tell me why it is that I can't touch girls anymore!"

Giles looked taken aback, and Buffy snorted back a laugh from her position, legs swinging, atop the counter.

"What was that?" Giles asked. "I mean to say, what do you mean when you say you can't _touch_ girls anymore?"

"Does it give you an icky feeling?" Buffy asked, mock seriously. "Is it the cooties you're afraid of, Xand?"

Xander couldn't work up a proper retort and besides, that wasn't what mattered at the moment. "I'm serious," he said. "It's like, it's like there's some sort of force field keeping us apart or something."

Now Giles stood up, and began walking toward him, tapping a pen on his chin. "Interesting. And it's only women, you say?"

"Yes," Xander huffed. "I can touch you just fine." He reached out and tapped Giles on his sweater-vested shoulder.

Giles caught his hand and examined it. "Well, there doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with you, that I can see."

"Well, no, there wouldn't be," Xander said, starting to get angry now at how dense they were all being. "This is obviously a spell that some evildoer has designed to torture me!"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Buffy roll hers, smiling fondly, and tried to quell his irritation.

"Hmm," Giles said. "Perhaps you're right. Though that would be quite…inventive of an evildoer, I must say. But let's test it out. You say you can't touch anyone who is female."

"That's right," Xander said. "See?" He strode over to Buffy, arms outstretched, as if to push her over the edge of the counter. She shrieked and held up her hands to ward him off, but Xander could have told her that was a waste of energy. When he was still half a step away, it was like he'd hit a wall. He was braced for it this time, so he didn't fall backward, but still, he definitely couldn't move forward.

Giles took off his glasses, polished them on the sweater vest, then put them on again. "Very interesting," he said, stepping closer. "You can't get any nearer to her than that?" Xander pushed his hands forward, braced against the invisible wall, and came no closer.

"Well, it does appear to be supernatural in origin, whatever it is," Giles declared, and Xander put his hands down, then sank to the floor and leaned his back against the counter.

"But who would have done this to you?" Willow asked, sounding worried, and, looking at her face, Xander suddenly knew without a doubt who it had been.

"I'll be right back," he said, and dashed out of the library.

Of course, it was almost five o'clock, and Cordelia had left school hours ago, so he had to wait until the next day—suffering though an extremely awkward encounter when his mother tried to pass him the mashed potatoes at dinner and he accidentally launched them right at her—to be sure.

**To be continued...**


	2. In Which There Is a Confrontation

"Cordelia!" he said the next morning, slamming her locker door closed and pinning her to it, careful to keep a wide enough distance between her shoulders and his hands braced on either side of them. He narrowed his eyes and tried to make his voice sound as threatening as possible. "Whatever the hell you did to me, undo it _right now_."

Cordelia looked surprised, and more than a little prissy. "Do to you? I didn't do anything to you. Luckily for me, Xander, I never have to _do_ anything to you ever again. You made sure of that."

Something that maybe was hurt flashed across her face for a second, but Xander couldn't be sure before it was gone, and Cordelia continued. "Now move out of my way, you barbarian, and let me get to class." She started to try to push her way past his arm, but as soon as she got within two inches of it, it sprung away from the locker, almost hitting Xander in the face.

Cordelia looked surprised again. "Well, _thank you_," she said, and started to walk away down the hall, denim skirt swishing stiffly.

"No, wait, Cordy!" Xander said, hurrying to catch up with her. "Seriously, something's going on. Something bad."

"Don't you have your little Scooby Gang to help you with that?" She said without stopping. "I'm sure _Willow_ would be only too happy to investigate."

Xander sighed. "Look, how many times do I have to say I'm sorry, Cordelia? You _know_ I am. You know I—"

Cordelia held up a hand, her mouth twisting unattractively, and in that moment of distinct un-beauty, all Xander wanted to do was put his arms around her, hug her and kiss her and hold her. But of course he couldn't. Because of whatever it was that she'd done to him that she was now stubbornly refusing to admit to. It was just like Cordy.

"Don't say it Xander," Cordelia said. "Don't even think it. You don't have an idea in hell what love is." And then she stomped away.

* * *

><p>Xander tried again at lunch, but she slipped away from him in the cafeteria line, and he couldn't see her over the heads of his peers, engaged in a veritable feeding frenzy, stuffing pizza into their mouths like they'd never get another meal. Although, Xander considered, living on the Hellmouth, that <em>was<em> always a possibility.

He waited for Cordelia outside of her calculus classroom at the end of the day, determined not to let her get away from him this time. It was getting harder and harder to avoid touching girls entirely, and harder and harder to ignore the weird looks that came his way whenever his arm spasmodically flapped around on its own.

"Cordelia," he said softly, going for a reasonable tone, but she jumped anyway.

"God, you creep," she huffed. "Are you stalking me now?"

Xander took a deep breath, willing himself to remain calm. "No," he said. "But seriously, Cordy, this is getting embarrassing. You've made a fool of me now, fine. You've gotten your revenge. Now will you please take it off?"

Cordelia gave him that look, where she pulled her chin back into her face and wrinkled her nose. "Take what off, pervert? I am definitely not taking _anything_ off right here in the hallway. God."

"Take the spell off!" Xander shouted, losing his vowed calmness all in a rush. "I know you put some sort of spell on me! I don't know who you went to, who's good enough to get it so specific. Because I can touch boys all I want, Cordelia! I just can't touch girls!"

Xander became aware of a sudden silence, and looked around him to see people frozen at their lockers and in the doors of classrooms, staring at him. He cleared his throat and turned back to Cordelia, but even so, he could hear a couple whispers behind him as people drifted away: "Harris is into dudes, then? Can't say I'm really surprised," and "So _that's_ why they broke up!"

But Cordelia clearly wasn't hearing anything going on around her. Her eyes had taken on a sort of far-off look and her mouth was slightly open. "Ohhh," she said. "Ohhh."

"Oh what?" Xander asked frantically. "Did you happen to remember some evil curse you had forgotten about, or something?"

Cordelia's eyes snapped onto his and she closed her mouth, setting her chin firmly. "Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. And it serves you right. It _so_ serves you right." While Xander was still standing there, wishing with all his might that he could grab her and shake her until she told him what was going on, she began wandering off along the hallway toward her locker, murmuring, "She must have been a witch then. I never would have suspected; she had such good taste in shoes."

"Who did?" Xander called after her desperately. "What are you talking about?"

"Anya," Cordelia called back over her shoulder. "But good luck trying to find her. She hasn't been in school the past two days."

* * *

><p>And sure enough, when Xander went to the office and asked about a new student named Anya, he was told that there was no one attending Sunnydale High by that name. In fact, there never had been.<p>

Xander went home and curled up on his bed, all hope of spells that could be lifted entirely dashed, suddenly certain that he would undoubtedly spend the rest of his years depressingly and utterly alone.


	3. In Which Xander Has an Identity Crisis

Chapter Three

In Which Xander Has a Sexual Identity Crisis

"Oh Xander, don't be an idiot," Buffy said to him the next morning when he told her his fears before the first bell.

"You are being completely unsympathetic to my plight!" he said. "Giles, punch her for me."

Giles looked up from the papers he was poring over behind the desk. He was always poring over something. Xander had long suspected that he was faking doing research and was merely enjoying a stuffy British novel when he did this. Or perhaps porn.

"I most certainly will not," Giles said. "You know perfectly well that Buffy will punch me right back. I don't intend to get a black eye just to satisfy your adolescent bickering."

Xander turned his back on both of them.

"Oh Xander, lighten up," Buffy said, pushing herself off the table where she had been perched and walking into his line of sight again. "I just meant, this isn't a death sentence, you know?"

"And besides," Willow piped up. "Plenty of spells fade over time. Who knows? This one might only last a couple of years."

"A…couple of years?" Xander gasped.

"Or a couple of months," Willow hurriedly corrected herself. "The point is, we won't know until we do some more research. _Real _research," she said, angling her eyes towards Giles, which made Xander give a triumphant "ha!" in his head. So he wasn't the only one who suspected.

xXx

And so they researched, or at least they started to until Angel started acting crazy and tortured _again_ (sometimes, in his more selfish moments, Xander was certain that Angel was just doing it for attention), and there was another big bad hanging around and making Christmas trees whither, and then after that Hansel and Gretal showed up and there were fires in the basement and everything was a mess, and then after that it was something else. There was always something else, and never enough time to focus on the fact that Xander's body parts kept flinging themselves back at him whenever he got within a few inches of anyone with lady parts.

By the time Valentine's Day rolled around, Xander had pretty much resigned himself to never getting any action from anyone but his left hand ever again. Occasionally, he would catch Cordelia looking at him like she still wanted him, like she would like to reach out, but she never did and in the end Xander was glad, because he knew it would just end in disappointment for both of them. Mostly him.

By March, Xander felt starved. He didn't remembered feeling _this _desperate for contact back in the days when he wasn't getting any at all. But he reasoned that his body felt it more now—after months of feeling Cordelia's lips on his and his hand up her shirt and even, a couple of times, down her pants—when all of that delicious delicious friction, that skin on skin, was now gone.

And so when Jack O'Toole threatened him outside the Bronze, held a knife to his cheek and got close, oh so close, close enough that Xander could feel O'Toole's breath on his neck, he had no choice but to blame his horniness for the way he felt a shiver run deep through his stomach.

He was a seventeen year old boy, after all, who thought about sex approximately twice every nanosecond. He couldn't possibly blame himself. (He could blame those stupid feminist demons or witches or whatever Anya had been though, and he did. Stupid feminist demons. Xander would kill them all if he could get his hands on them. Not that he would be able to…)

He didn't have any explanation for the way he allowed himself to keep feeling it, though, driving around with Jack in his uncle's borrowed car, Jack's hand tight on his shoulder, tight enough to make Xander's breath go short.

Of course, then it turned out that Jack O'Toole was a creepy, psychotic zombie, because that was just the way Xander's luck ran. After he defused the bomb and Oz ate him, Xander couldn't quite figure out why he didn't tell the gang all about it, prove to Buffy and Willow once and for all that he was useful and good. He tried to tell himself that it was all some noble gesture, but eventually he admitted that it was also a little bit because he didn't want to have to examine those feelings again, the feeling like his insides were twisting, coiling, heating up inside him with Jack's face so close to his.

After that, though, the idea was there, and Xander couldn't get rid of it no matter how hard he tried to think at night of long hair and soft hands and, you know, boobs. It wasn't that he didn't want to be thinking about girls, but now the idea of "Boys, _they can touch me_," was lodged in his brain, seemingly forevermore.

A week after the Jack O'Toole incident, Xander found himself picturing Jack as he…jacked off, not even the ridiculous punning (Buffy would be proud. Or disgusted) able to push the image of Jack, hair sticking up from his head and sneer on his face out of Xander's mind. He came quickly, even quicker than he normally did, and then jumped into the shower, fruitlessly trying to scrub the memory off of him, but the hot water was too much like Jack's hot breath in his ear.

The next day at school, Willow went to lay a hand on his arm and then sighed resignedly when it flew back and smacked her in the chest, but Xander was too distracted and distraught to even notice how it made her breasts jiggle. "I know I should know better than to try that by now," Willow said, "but I just forget sometimes, you know?"

"I wish I could," Xander said, laying his head on his arms and willing himself not to whine. Faith had gone rogue, working for the Mayor and doing God knew what, and Xander knew they all had better things to worry about than him.

But Willow was still studying him. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Xander shrugged. "I'm fine."

Willow looked skeptical. "Are you sure?"

Xander nodded mutely, then turned back to study the book in front of him, but the words swam, and all he could think about was short spiky hair and chiseled jaws. He had even, much to his horror, given a thought to how Angel was very attractive that morning before firmly closing the lid on _that_ line of thought.

xXx

But Xander couldn't stop all the thoughts of boys, people in his classes or men he passed on the street, couldn't stop imagining them running their hands over his body, over every inch of it that had gone untouched these past months, except for the times when Oz gave him a half smile and a sympathetic pat on the back.

Eventually, he stopped trying to stop. It was spring and that meant hot weather in Sunnydale, and shorts, and how had Xander never noticed how nice a shape calves were, and how it was actually sort of nice, the way a light dusting of hair coated the skin there?

It was too hard, with all the other things he had to concentrate on, not to let his mind wander to the way the boy next to him in math twirled his pencil between long fingers, or the naked chests of his fellow sufferers in third period gym, and so Xander let it.

He even thought about approaching Larry for about half a second, because, you know, he was there, and, as far as Xander knew, available. And Larry already thought Xander was gay anyway, especially after his little outburst in the hallway the first day of the spell, which by the magical and evil nature of high school, everyone seemed to know about by the next morning. But in the end he decided not to. He just didn't want to go there, didn't want to deal with the stares he knew they would get. And besides, he couldn't quite imagine Larry's big, muscled hands (even his hands were muscled, for God's sake) touching him.

Well, that was a lie. But still, Xander sat and waited and felt paralyzed, as though fearful that if he got up the courage to touch Larry (or anyone else) his hand would bounce right back at him at full speed, punching himself in the face as perhaps he deserved.

xXx

A/N: So, what do you guys think so far? Am I being too hard on our boy Xander? Review and let me know!


	4. In Which Xander Gets Hit On

Chapter Four

In Which Xander Gets Hit On at the Bronze, Among Other Things

One night, when Buffy was doing recon on Faith and Willow was presumably getting it on with Oz (why else would they be having so many "date nights" lately?), Xander went to the Bronze alone.

It was as loud and dark and stuffy as always, but this time, Xander was glad of it, because he could throw back his head and dance alone in the middle of the crowded floor and no one really noticed that much when their arms and legs flew around when they got too close because that was all dancing was, really. He was so lost in the music and the feeling (even though he knew it was false) of community that Xander almost didn't notice the hand on his ass.

He did, though, of course, because it certainly wasn't every day that someone touched Xander, let alone touched him like _that_. He turned around and met the eyes of a man slightly shorter than him and at least five years older, Xander thought, though he had never been good at estimating age.

The man had dark hair slicked back and parted to the side like Xander's grandfather had done when he'd been alive, but his face looked bright under the hazy red lights of the Bronze and he had the sort of mischevious grin that made Xander want to grin right back.

The man raised an eyebrow and didn't take his hand off Xander's ass.

Xander could suddenly feel his heart beating fast and irregular just above his collarbone, but he swallowed and moved in closer to the man, tentatively putting his hands on the man's hips. After that, it was easier than he'd thought it would be, just swaying to the music, and when the man pushed his knee between Xander's legs, Xander felt a jolt and then a kind of peace slide over him. It was the same kind of tentative certainty he'd had just before he and Cordy had grabbed each other's faces and kissed that first time, and just before he'd leaned over Willow on the bed just before they'd been caught. The certainty that yes, this was going to happen, and he was going to like it, damn the consequences.

When the song ended, the man raised his eyebrows again and tilted his head toward the door, and Xander had seen enough movies to recognize the universal symbol for, "Let's get out of here." So he followed along, heart nervous and jumping in his chest, the anticipation simmering delightfully just beneath his skin.

They went out into the alley, slid hand in hand around the corner to the dumpsters where Xander had watched Buffy and Faith dust more than a few vampires. That should have been his first clue, that lack of originality, that seen-it-all-before quality. Well, really the hair should have been his first clue, but who was counting?

The man leaned against the wall, hands sliding down his own thighs before reaching out and catching at Xander's belt loops. Xander leaned in, put his hands on the wall on either side of the man's chest. He could hear his own breath bouncing loudly back at him, so loud he couldn't hear his companion's.

"So," Xander said breathily, thinking that they should probably say at least two words to each other before this all went down, "What's your name, anyway?"

"It's Errol," said the guy, and there went clue number three, whizzing past Xander's head and off into oblivion.

Xander laughed a little bit. "That's one I haven't heard in a while," he said. "I'm Xander."

The man smiled, lazy, stretching up one hand to push Xander's hair out of his eyes. "So you're not really one to talk then, are you?"

"I guess not," Xander agreed, and then there was that silence, the waiting, the moment before. Then Errol's mouth crashed down onto Xander's pulling him in by his lips. Errol's teeth were sinking in slightly, his tongue tapping a beat on Xander's bottom lip, and Xander was surprised and not surprised at all that he liked the harshness of it. He had never really been one for subtlety.

Neither was Errol, apparently, because he only put up with the pretense of kissing for a few seconds before moving his lips to Xander's neck. When Xander thought back on it later, he thought it must have been the brush of hardness against his cheek, that rough, not-quite-skin feel that made him pull back and take another look.

At which point, he saw that Errol was a vampire. Of course he was. Of course this would happen to Xander, of all people. His first kiss in months and it's with a vampire. How typically classical and how typically horrifying.

Xander rolled his eyes. "Really?" he asked Errol. "I mean, really?"

Errol grinned, showing all the cracked and turned-inward teeth that Xander really did _not_ want to think about having just been on his body. "Come on," Errol said. "I thought we were having a good time." He pouted. "Does this mean you don't want to come back to my place?"

"Crypts aren't really my style," Xander said, moving backward, having spotted the ragged two-by-four sticking out of the dumpster.

"Oh no?" asked Errol, taking a step forward.

"Not really, no," Xander said, and then whipped around faster than he'd known he could, grabbing the board and shoving it through Errol's chest.

After Errol exploded into dust and Xander spat some of him out of his mouth, he sighed, then leaned his hands on his knees and surveyed the alley before walking home.

xXx

It was way too embarrassing to tell the gang about, especially since he would have needed to tell about the whole making out with a dude thing before even_ getting_ to the vampire part. But of course, because it was so embarrassing, when Buffy started reading minds, it was all he could think about.

That and Andrew, which was even worse.

Andrew.

He had run into Andrew the day before, literally run into him as he was leaving the biology lab at the end of the day. He'd still been wigging a little bit from the whole almost-being-seduced-and-eaten-by-a-vampire thing, so he hadn't noticed the hunched blond figure hurtling toward him, carrying a stack of posters, until it was too late.

It happened by the drinking fountain, and when they collided, all the posters went up into the air and the other boy started to fall backwards, slipping on the water no doubt created by all the freshman boys who had contests to see how far they could make it arc. Xander grabbed hold of the front of Andrew's jacket, which just made Xander tip forward and fall right on top of him.

His hand dropped as they fell, windmilling and, when they landed, ending up squashed between their crotches, palm down. Xander pushed himself up almost immediately, but not before he felt something, oh God _something,_ confirming for certain that, you know, Ken doll anatomy was not exactly correct and all.

He scrambled frantically around, picking up posters that were now helpfully soaking up excess drinking fountain water, and said, "I'm so sorry, so sorry! Let me help you!" without looking at the boy.

When he finally stood up and faced him, the boy gave a scowl and tugged the posters out of his hands. "Thanks," he said, though he didn't sound particularly grateful. He just kept standing there, though, glaring at the posters as though they had personally done him great harm.

"You seemed like you were in a big hurry," Xander hedged, hoping the boy would leave so he could go back to his consideration of his crushing embarrassment in peace.

"I'm on my way to the auditorium," he said, still straightening the posters. "_The Wizard of Oz_ goes up tomorrow." His voice changed then, becoming darker, almost like a cackling villain in some cartoon. "And boy is it going to be fantastic."

"Oh yeah?" Xander said. "I didn't even know we did plays here. Are you in it?" Maybe I'll have to come see it," and then immediately wanted to hit himself over the head with something very heavy.

"No, I'm not in it. I just work…backstage," he said, the last word once again in that same overwrought supervillain voice.

"Oh," Xander said. "Okay, well…"

Apparently finally finding his posters to be presentable, the boy looked up, "You could still come see it though," he said, then did a double take and, if Xander wasn't mistaken, blushed a little bit. "Oh, I know _you_."

"Do you?" Xander asked. He was sure he'd never seen this kid before in his whole four years at Sunnydale. "How do you know me?"

The boy was definitely blushing now, and he looked away again. "You were on the swim team last year," he said, then, talking faster. "I'm a really big fan of sports. Yes, I love sports. They are a thing that I love."

Xander laughed, finding himself unable to look away from the red spreading out from the boy's cheekbones. "Well, that's good, I guess. We always need those. What's your name, again?"

"I'm Andrew," the boy said, all in a rush. "And I really have to go now goodbye."

Xander watched him tearing off down the hall in the direction of the auditorium.

Now, he remembered Andrew's breath fluttering in his throat, his ribs jerking as he tried to breathe with Xander's weight on him for the one second it had been. Later, he cursed the way his mind had lingered on Andrew's face (which, when he thought back on it later, was sort of pinched and mousy, all coming to a point at the nose, and why had he been so unable to look away?) when he realized that Buffy could have been able to read it there.

Xander was terrified to ask if she had paid a visit to his brain and terrified not to, terrified that she had figured out that he was attracted to guys now, because let's face it, Xander had to admit it to himself sometime: he was attracted to boys now.

Later, after they'd defeated the evil lunch lady and Xander's thoughts had meandered back to Andrew's fluffed up hair and small, square hands clutching his damp posters in a way that was _very very much_ against his will, Buffy looked at him strangely, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes. She didn't say anything, but Xander could have sworn he saw her put her hand up to her mouth and giggle a little bit as she walked away.

xXx

A/N: Ah, young love. I really had a lot of fun writing this chapter. As always, reviews are much appreciated!


	5. In Which Xander Uses the Closets Again

In Which Xander Puts the Closets of Sunnydale High to Use Once Again

He didn't see Andrew for two weeks after that. It was almost like Andrew was avoiding him, because Xander was kind of…doing the exact opposite of avoiding Andrew. Or at least, he would have been if he could find the guy anywhere.

But he seemed to have disappeared.

Until he reappeared again one day, looking frazzled and windblown and like a couple of clumps of his hair had been torn out by the roots. And damnit, Xander still found him adorable.

Typically, Xander was not looking his best. Not even close, since he'd been up all night chasing Faith and jumping out of the way of the Mayor and his creepy spider monsters and trying _very hard_ not to think about what a marvelous invention suits were, how they looked good on almost anybody, even if that person was as insufferable as Wesley.

He was sleepwalking his way to trig when he spotted Andrew, ducking down a corridor with his hand up to his head, trying to smooth down hair that looked like it would never be smooth again. And Xander followed him, because it seemed the logical thing to do. Andrew had sort of a shifty look….It was quite possible he was up to something…incredibly evil. Or something. Yes, that was exactly why Xander followed him.

Andrew stopped abruptly in front of a storage closet to violently rip down one of the _Wizard of Oz_ posters Xander had helpfully helped him get drop on the floor last week. He was ripping the poster (almost as big as him) into smaller and smaller strips when Xander approached.

"Need any help with that?" was a great opening line and Xander refused to feel embarrassed that he couldn't think of anything unbearably witty to say. Firmly _refused_.

"No," Andrew said without looking up.

Then he did look up, and dropped half his slips of paper. "Oh," he said. "Hi."

"Hi," said Xander. Another great line, beloved of romantically successful people everywhere.

Andrew didn't say anything, just kept looking at Xander with a sort of awe and a sort of suspicion, and Xander couldn't look at it anymore, so he dropped to his knees and started picking up the long strings of poster paper now littering the ground.

Which was assuredly a mistake, since it put his line of vision directly at the level of Andrew's beshorted legs and oh god, his crotch. Xander hastily stood up again.

"Uh…how was the show?" he asked. "Sorry I couldn't make it. Busy. Yes, busy."

Andrew lifted one shoulder, his face bending into a scowl, and he had a very expressive face. Xander was allowed to notice things like that about people. About anyone! It didn't necessarily _mean _anything. "It was okay, I guess," Andrew said. "Hardly anybody even noticed the flying monkeys."

"Aren't they…kind of a main plot point?" Xander asked.

Andrew shrugged, both shoulders this time. "You would think," he said. "But apparently flying monkeys aren't _good enough_ for some people. Other people have much better ideas, ones they'll be putting into action very soon." On the last few words, his voice took on that dark, supervillain quality again, and Xander found himself wanting to laugh at it, thinking it was cute, and _what _was wrong with him.

"What ideas could be better than flying monkeys?" he asked, still not entirely sure what they were talking about, but sure that they should definitely keep talking at all costs, even if it meant that he was _definitely_ missing trig right now.

Speaking of which. Xander looked around, on the lookout for teachers lurking in the hallways to catch hooky-playing students. He didn't see any, but that didn't meant they weren't there. Trying not to think too much about the implications of what he was doing, Xander jerked open the closet door and stepped inside. "You better come in if you want to keep talking," he said. "Or we might get caught." It should have been his first clue that Andrew stepped in without hesitation.

"There are lots of things better than flying monkeys, _apparently_," Andrew said once they were safely ensconced (and rather uncomfortably squished) in the closet. "Whenever Tucker tells me about his plans, they're always better than mine." He sighed. "With him, I just feel like Jimmy Olsen next to Superman sometimes, you know?"

Xander actually gasped. "I could kiss you for that reference right now," he said before he thought about it. Or at least before he thought about it long enough to realize that he was the stupidest person in the universe, and also about to seriously weird out the guy in the closet with him right now.

While he was feeling mortified and trying to look anywhere but Andrew's eyes, Xander found his gaze caught in Andrew's spun-gold hair, and thought it looked just perfect for getting his fingers all tangled up in too, realized that his mouth was open and he was probably—excruciatingly—panting or something. Xander looked up. Andrew was giving him a squint-eyed half-frown.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked.

"Why are you looking at _me_ like that?" Xander shot back.

"Because you're looking at me like that!" Andrew said, and his voice squeaked a little bit on the last word and there was something _serious wrong_ with Xander that he found that unbelievably enticing.

He found the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them, "Oh god, would you kill me if I kissed you right now?"

He squeezed his eyes shut against the inevitable brightening that would happen when Andrew stormed out of the closet and never spoke to him again. But instead he felt a tentative hand on his chest (and god, any hand on him anywhere still felt unbelievably good, unbelievably unexpected, unbelievably welcome) and heard Andrew's voice saying, "No. I wouldn't kill you," soft, and then gaining volume as he said, "In fact, kissing me might actually be likely to save you from being killed when—"

And then he stopped himself, and Xander didn't have any idea how he was about to finish that sentence. But it didn't matter, because Andrew snapping his mouth shut gave Xander a chance to crash his own mouth down onto Andrew's, pushing their bodies together against cleaning supplies and extra (probably dried up by now) paint cans, and it was better than any words could possibly have been.

xXx

And even better than that was the way it kept happening. Xander hardly even had time to be afraid that it was just a one-time thing and Andrew would still hate him forevermore, because the next day Andrew caught his eye in the hallway and stepped into a supply cupboard, and Xander followed. And the next day when Andrew grinned over his shoulder at Xander before opening up the "Do Not Enter"ed basement door, and Xander stepped in after him even though he was almost certain there was almost always something evil going on in the basement.

He began to suspect that he would gladly face evil just for a chance of getting some more of Andrew's sucking kisses and light hands on his stomach, and that began to frighten him even more than the potential evil itself.

Plus Larry kept trying to have heart-to-hearts with him, and Xander was just about desperate enough for some advice about how his life had spun so wildly out of control that he let him.

"Just do it," Larry said. "Tell your friends." And Xander knew he should, even though he couldn't shake having a bad feeling about it. He knew that in between everything else, it'd be the least exciting thing they'd heard all year. They probably wouldn't even blink, and Xander was almost sure they'd support him. Even Giles, though he might give him more weird looks than usual. Stuffy old British dude.

Because the thing was, all year—all his life—Xander had been waiting to find himself, had wanted to figure out who he was when he wasn't trailing after his friends, being backup guy or needs-to-be-rescued guy or just-fell-over-and-can't-think-of-a-comeback-to-tell-Cordelia guy. But whenever he was with Andrew, he didn't feel like any of those guys. He just felt like a guy, and Xander was starting to think that maybe that was what finding yourself felt like.

And it wasn't a bad feeling at all.


	6. In Which Prom Happens and Is Awesome

In Which Prom Happens and It Is Awesome

He didn't have time to give his potential life-changing realization more thought, though, before someone distinctly _not_ his friend turned up.

Anya caught up to Xander on the steps of the school. "Hey, it's Anya, punisher of evil males," he said. "I thought you were gone forever."

Then he realized. "I thought you were gone forever! Oh thank god! Take it off me! Please!" he said before he could even think about what he was saying. The instinct to see Anya find Anya get Anya to take curse off was even more deeply ingrained in his head now than the need for sugary cereal in the morning.

She looked at him. "Please. I was here two weeks ago. Remember? When there were two Willows hanging around? You were as annoying as usual? God, what, did that entire day escape your memory?"

It sort of had, to be honest. Well, not the Willow in a sexy outfit part. But Anya, she had just hung around for a minute doing a spell and then left again, and he hadn't been thinking. There had been too many other things to think about.

I mean, first there was the thought that Willow was dead, and then there was, you know, Willow in a super sexy outfit. And in the face of all that, Xander's problem just didn't seem so important anymore.

It seemed important now, though, (even though he felt a pang at the thought of Andrew. But it wasn't like he couldn't keep making out with Andrew in closets if he could touch girls again. He'd just, you know, be able to choose. And if he started dating a girl again, maybe then the guys wouldn't be so careful to cover themselves up in front of him in the locker room, which would be doubly fortuitous).

But Anya just sighed and said she couldn't take the curse off, and even if she could, it wasn't like Xander had endeared himself to her in any way. "D'Hoffryn took away my powers and made me a high school girl," she said. "Boy, he's got a nose for punishment." She sighed again. "It seems like this curse on you is the last one I got to slip in." She sniffed. "If I'd known that, I would have spent it on something much better."

"You know," Xander said, "You're not doing much in the endearing-yourself-to-me category either."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean, I presume there's something you want? Or you wouldn't be hanging around here."

"I don't have a date for the prom," she grumbled out of the corner of her mouth, and then started ranting about _feelings_ before Xander could stop her.

Xander said, "Well, you definitely don't want me, then. Very bad with the dancing when it involves touching the ladies, me. Or haven't you heard?" and thought that maybe there were some perks to this gig after all. Not that he didn't know that already.

But Anya looked right at him, lips pursed and head cocked to the side, surveying him mercilessly in that way she had. "I heard. That's why I'm asking you. Men are evil, but I know there's no chance you'll try anything I'd want to punish you for and not be able to…" she sighed. "_Yet_. Plus," she said, brightening, "I'm sure you'll look perfectly adequate in a suit."

While Xander was spluttering about all of that, she continued, "Besides, you owe me."

"I owe you?" Xander's voice squeaked a little bit, but he couldn't even give that the attention it deserved. "You're the one who made it so I can never ever know the pleasure of sweet lady parts."

Anya smiled, sly. "You don't seem all that disappointed about it. Not if what I've been witnessing in closets and basement stairwells is any indication." And Xander wasn't sure whether this was understanding or blackmail but either way he felt threatened by it (how was she spying on him in closets? Using tricky demon tricks, no doubt. He _knew _there were evil things in that basement!), and he felt that Anya had indubitably (somehow) gained the upper hand. Women.

Then she said, "Besides, I know you find me attractive. I've seen you looking at my breasts" (which was totally true and Xander refused to be ashamed) and then somehow all his arguments had gotten turned around and he was going to prom with Anya.

He felt guilty, though, felt that press of gloominess in his chest, the trickling of his insides as the day went on. But it wasn't like he and Andrew are boyfriend and…boyfriend, or anything. They hadn't even talked about prom. But maybe they should have.

He felt even worse when Andrew brought it up the next time they were making out in a closet. Mid-kisses, he said "Are you going to prom?" and Xander bit his lip (his own lip this time) and then said, "Yes?" like it was a question.

Andrew started to say, "Maybe you shouldn't…" at the same time that Xander pressed on, "I'm taking Anya." At that, Andrew's face grew still, and he pushed away from Xander, like Xander had been scared he was going to do all along. He could hear the scowl in Andrew's voice as he said, "Well, fine. _Go_ to prom, then. See if I care."

Xander tried to put his hand on Andrew's shoulder, but Andrew backed away from him, hand scrabbling for the door. He got his hand around the knob and then finally he looked at Xander, but there was something in his eyes Xander couldn't read in between all the storming out of the closet Andrew was doing.

xXx

Of course, he felt horrible for feeling horrible once he heard about the whole Buffy and Angel breaking up thing (and he knew that Angel was no good, he's been saying it all along), because at least Xander _had _a date for prom, even if she was an ex-demon.

And then _of course _they had bigger problems, because a crazy deranged dog-wolf-thing demon broke into the dress shop just when Xander was tipping past the point of feeling sorry for Cordelia and starting to wonder where she was getting all this breath to yell at him with, and what with the maiming and the killing, his worries started to extend a little past who his prom date was.

At the name "Wells," Xander jumped in the library. Andrew's brother, the one he was always talking about, the one with the big plans he never let Andrew in on. It had to be, and not just in a charming coincidence way, but a way where it _definitely was_. Xander was still mulling it (as well as Buffy's whole happiness-only-through-death speech) over on his way to the magic shop when he saw Andrew across the street at the Espresso Pump, looking dejected or maybe just contemplative over a cup of what Xander strongly suspected was hot chocolate.

Xander edged up to the table, unsure if he should sit, unsure if Andrew would storm off again as soon as he realized Xander was there.

"Hey," he said tentatively.

Andrew looked up, and there were lines on his forehead Xander had never seen there before. "Hi," he said.

"How's it going?"

"Fine, I guess." And then, his voice edging up slightly, "All ready for the prom tonight?"

"That's actually what I wanted to ask you about," Xander said, then could have kicked himself (very hard, in the kneecap) when Andrew's eyes lit up briefly, and Xander had to hurriedly continue, "I'm still going. With Anya." And then he could have kicked himself some more. He took a breath and continued, "I've heard some, um…rumors. That your brother might be planning some sort of…prank? To do at prom. Do you know anything about that?"

Andrew leaned back with his arms crossed, his face seeming to slam down into a sort of stubborn mask. "I don't know anything," he said. Then, "I told you it would be a bad idea to go," and a lot of things started clicking into place for Xander, casual phrases and cut-off conversations during stolen closet minutes, and Xander called himself an idiot for at least the twelfth time today.

"Okay, I get that now," Xander said. "And I am—I am really sorry for not telling you sooner that I was going with Anya. Or not bringing it up even earlier than that. I mean, I don't know what—" and he couldn't even finish that sentence, couldn't say "what we are" because even _that _was too scary to think about. Not quite as scary as hellhounds, but pretty damn close.

Andrew shrugged. "I don't know either," he said. "But I guess it makes me know better, now that I know you don't know." And he gave a sort of sad smile and stood up, putting the table between him and Xander. "Bye, Xander."

And Xander wanted to call after him and ask something ridiculous like, "Does this mean we're breaking up?" or "Does this mean we're all really going to die at prom tonight?" but he held his tongue and turned toward the magic shop. There was no need to be an idiot more than twelve times in one day.

Then he stopped in and bought Cordelia's dress for her. It was almost a whim, he tried to tell himself as he passed by the shop, but he knew it was at least half the reason he volunteered for magic shop duty in the first place. Because he was already dipping into his road trip fund and he figured it was the least he could do, and he wished he could tell her that he didn't hate her for what she did, that he understood why she did it, that he knew he was hardly blameless in the whole them-breaking-up thing. And he needed to make amends to _somebody_, at least.

When he saw her at the dance (and oh thank god he did, because he couldn't take another minute of Anya talking about ex-vengeance she'd caused. Or asking insinuating questions about how _far _he and Andrew had gotten in the closets). And when Cordelia said, "Thank you," he moved his head to the side and shrugged it off, and told her her dress looked good on her. Which it did. Though he decided to refrain from mentioning that even though it made her breasts look particularly fabulous, he was starting to suspect (okay, more than suspect) that they were not the only things that did it for him.

He was just getting resigned to hearing more stories of disembowelment than _anyone _should be subjected to _ever _when he saw a flash of blond hair behind the curtains framing the stage, and he escaped from Anya (by telling her to imagine what she'd do to that guy over there making out with someone who Xander knew was distinctly not his girlfriend behind the punch bowl) and went to investigate.

It was Andrew. He wasn't wearing a tux, wasn't even wearing a suit, just jeans and a ratty sweatshirt and crouching there behind the curtain, peering out every one-and-a-half seconds or so.

"If you're trying to be sneaky, you might try another method," Xander told him, stooping down beside him.

Andrew gasped and fell over, sitting down among the tangled wires backstage. "Xander," he said. "Oh my god, Xander, I'm still really mad at you but you look a little bit like Timothy Dalton right now."

"Not Pierce Brosnan?" he asked, ready to pout before he remembered that there were kind of bigger issues at hand here. "Andrew, what are you doing here?"

"I'm…waiting," Andrew said. He tried to hide his hand behind his back, but Xander grabbed it. He tried to ignore the way his pulse beat faster with Andrew's hand in his as he yanked at what looked like a remote control for one of those airplanes Xander had always wanted when he was a kid.

Xander dropped the remote control on the ground, where a large chunk broke off and went whizzing into the depths of the backstage area. Andrew gave a cry of dismay.

"You broke it!" he said.

"Yeah, I broke the thing you were using to sic hellhounds on people! I can't believe you're helping your brother!"

Andrew looked up from the floor, where he sat holding the remaining piece of the remote together and jamming his fingers on the controls.

"Tucker doesn't even know I'm here," he said quietly. "I thought…I thought if I stole the remote and got here first I could maybe control them, direct them away from people. I don't know if it would have worked. But now I can't even try."

And immediately Xander felt his insides crumple. "Oh god. Oh god, Andrew, I'm sorry."

Andrew shrugged and stood up. "It's not your fault," he said. "But you can do one thing to make it up to me."

"Anything," Xander said, which he should have known was a mistake.

"Get out of here, with me, right now," Andrew said, grabbing his wrist tightly, and his mouth was set so firmly that Xander was sure Andrew would drag him out of there kicking and screaming if he didn't go quietly.

"Fine," he said. "Let me just tell Willow."

But Andrew shook his head. "There's no time." And with one last glance out at the stage and the dance beyond, Xander allowed himself to be dragged out into the warm spring night.

Where they were immediately greeted by the snarls of hellhounds.

Xander yanked Andrew behind a tree, but it was too late. There were two hellhounds, and one had seen them. It bounded toward them across the lawn, while Andrew frantically tried jabbing at the remote control again. Of course it did nothing. When the hellhound was a few feet away, Xander leapt from behind the tree and attempted some sort of karate-chop/kick combo, but the hellhound darted around him and jumped at Andrew, who fell on his back and kicked frantically at the hellhound's face. At least one must have connected, though, because the hellhound yowled.

Then they were saved by the blessed strains of dance music emanating from the school. The hellhound picked up its head and bounded off in the direction of the doors, and a moment later Xander saw Buffy tearing after it. So that all looked to be in order then.

Andrew, however, had dissolved in tears and sat behind the tree with his arms locked around his knees. Xander sat next to him and tentatively patted his back and didn't have an idea in hell what to do. After a moment, though, Andrew sniffed and wiped his nose and laughed. "Best evil plan ever," he said.

"Yeah, it's one of the better ones I've seen. And trust me, I've seen a lot."

Andrew laughed again, then stood up and brushed the dirt from his jeans. "I'm sorry," he said.

"No," Xander said emphatically. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed you'd be helping your brother."

Andrew lifted a shoulder, twisted his mouth. "It's okay. I understand."

"No, it's not okay." Xander could feel his voice becoming (of all things) tender as he put out a hand and turned Andrew toward him. "I can't believe I thought you could be involved in anything evil. I can't believe I thought you could ever be anything but so, so good."

Andrew looked down, then reached up and brought Xander's mouth down to his.

They were still making out behind the tree when Anya walked up.

"Oh honestly," she said, and when Xander turned she stood with a hand on her hip and one heel tapping the ground ineffectually. "I should have known." She spun away, and Xander swore he could hear her muttering, "Humans are so _not worth it_" and Xander was pretty sure he would never see her again.

"Bye, Anya! It's been a blast," he called after her, then swung his hand in Andrew's. "Wanna go back to the dance?"

Andrew looked uncertain for a moment, but then he nodded. He squeezed Xander's hand once and then let it go, after giving Xander another look he was sure was meant to be significant, but of what he didn't know. But he reached out and took Andrew's hand again once they were back in the gym, in the back right corner where most of the balloons seemed to have gathered, ribbons trailing on the ground this late in the evening, as though they too had had too much excitement already at prom.

Xander wasn't sure if you were supposed to slow dance with a boy differently than you were supposed to slow dance with a girl, but he figured he'd make it worse if he thought about it too much. So he wrapped his arms around Andrew's waist and heard him sigh as he rested his hands on Xander's shoulders.

They broke apart to watch everyone (though not Xander, who _clearly _deserved class clown) receive their awards, and Xander whooped for Buffy, who he hadn't even seen come in.

Then he turned back to Andrew, cupped his cheek in the palm of his hand, and kissed him one more time.

"Best prom night ever," he whispered, and Andrew laughed on a breath and repeated back, "Best prom night ever."


	7. In Which Another Apocalypse Is Averted

In Which Another Apocalypse Is Averted

With prom( and the marvelous and in no way deadly distraction _that _had turned out to be) over, there was nothing but feelings of doom and gloom everywhere. And they wouldn't leave, even with Andrew blowing in Xander's ear when they met in the cemetery the week leading up to graduation. Andrew thought it was creepy, shivered and said he wished they could meet anywhere else. But Xander was supposed to be patrolling, so it was the cemetery or nowhere, and Andrew's shivers changed when Xander pushed him up against a mausoleum and tried not to think about anything else.

He came in late to class the day before the Ascension, a before with no after that Xander could imagine, because Andrew caught his hand in the hallway and asked if he was ever going to see him again after graduation. Andrew meant it as a joke, Xander thought, though maybe his smile was a little bit too fluttery for that to be completely true. But either way, Xander didn't know, on so many different levels. But he caught Andrew's hand right back and said, "Hey, you know how you told me I maybe shouldn't go to prom?" and when Andrew nodded he continued, "Well, you should possibly consider not going to graduation." And Andrew nodded again and said, "Something bad?" and Xander said, "Like you wouldn't believe."

Anya, who was still in school for some unfathomable reason, showed up to talk about the Ascension, and after she took off for the hills Xander thought at least this time he'd be rid of her (though, she was very pretty. Maybe even prettier than Buffy. But that wasn't the point). But she showed up again that night, said, "Come with me," and Xander didn't even hesitate before he stepped back and said, "I can't." It was another one of those times when he didn't even really think about the curse in the moment, just after. There were more important things here, and Xander couldn't leave.

Important things like Buffy being in the hospital. Spending the night clutching cups of horrible, horrible coffee in the waiting room (nice change from the library. Or not) meant that Xander didn't see Andrew again before graduation. When he stepped outside the next morning after prepping the troops, Xander's heart leapt as he scanned the crowd of students and parents and couldn't find Andrew there, couldn't find him anywhere. He hoped until his teeth hurt that Andrew had decided to skip graduation and also town until he saw him edging into the courtyard and sliding into his seat, third from the end in the last row, just before Snyder stood up to introduce the Mayor. And he let his teeth unclench: at least some new horrible thing hadn't happened, or if it had, Andrew hadn't gotten in the way of it.

After the horrible torture of the Mayor's speech had ended, everything was a rush of arrows and giant fireballs and shouting orders and watching his classmates die, and after it was over, Xander's head hurt and it was hard to breathe. His chest felt weighed down with it all, but even so, there was a tiny bit of lightness dancing there, telling him, "We won!"

Afterwards, everyone who wasn't grievously injured (and there were more of them than Xander would have liked, hence all the chest weight) pretty much scattered, and that made it hard to get a good body count. Actually, it was kind of hard to count anything, especially with the stars floating in front of Xander's eyes. Sparkly.

Xander walked with Buffy through the wreckage, past too many ambulances, and it was dumb but he couldn't help expecting to see Andrew sidling around a corner of one of them any second now. Because surely, after all that, surely not Andrew too...

After watching him crane his neck around for perhaps the fifteenth time, Buffy gave him a funny look.

"Hey," she said, smiling sort of soft and sad. "I know who I'm looking for. But who are you looking for?"

He ahem-ed and scratched the back of his neck and tried not to think of Larry being snake-snapped before he had a chance to see Xander doing what he'd always said he should. "Andrew Wells," he mumbled.

Buffy cocked her head. "Tucker's brother?"

"Yeah," Xander said. "You guys didn't know, but I've sort of been…seeing him. Or something! I don't know."

To his surprise, Buffy's eyes lit up. "Aha! So that's who! That's what we couldn't figure out. Will will be sad to learn that she owes me twenty bucks."

"Uh, I think 'excuse me' is an understatement, here," Xander said, sure his eyes were bugging out in an extremely lifelike and not at all cartoonish way.

"Because it's not Larry." Buffy made to pat him on the shoulder, then winced when her hand slapped into her temple. "Don't worry, friend. I knew he wasn't your type."

"My…type?" Xander was still more than a little lost. "But you're not surprised to find that my more general type…how should I put this? Lacks of the bosoms?"

Buffy laughed, and stopped herself from trying to pat him on the shoulder again. Xander was sure it would have felt less than reassuring anyway.

"No, not really even a little bit," she said, her mouth quirking. "Sorry, Xander."

When Xander continued to stand there staring agape at her, trying to work out through the fuzz in his brain when he had failed to be stealthy, what he must have done differently, if he had somehow drastically changed without knowing it and nobody had bothered to tell him.

"Come on, Xander," Buffy said, letting her hand fall back down to her side. "I think we've all had our suspicions for a while."

"Have we?" Xander distinctly did not yelp (you can't prove that that was a yelp). "Even…even before?"

And Buffy nodded. "Xander. Yes. You've had some gay…tendencies as long as I've known you. Think about the praying mantis incident."

And Xander remembered, back in the days when Buffy shone in his eyes as the one and only girl in all the world (ha, it was funny because she was the Chosen One). He remembered the beginning of his trouble with nefarious lady-demons, and he thought of himself and that kid Blaine stuck in the same cage and clutching each other as Ms. French clacked her pincers.

How Xander had felt a weird thump and a leap in his heart that had nothing to do with the monster outside the bars.

"You know there's only one way out of this?" he had asked Blaine, not quite sure what he was saying or what was making him say it, but hey, they were going to be dead soon so what did it matter?

"What?" Blaine had asked.

And Xander had licked his lips and said, "We have to not be virgins anymore."

Luckily Buffy and Willow and Giles had burst in before Xander could see the look on Blaine's face, see whether it was horror or disgust or glee that now Blaine had something else to mock Xander about. But it was true that Xander hadn't been super disgusted himself at the thought of pressing his body up against Blaine's again, except without all the clothes between them.

"And the mind reading thing kinda confirmed my suspicions," Buffy went on. "Though I agree: Oz does have nice hands."

"I knew it!" And this time Xander really did yelp. "I knew you were listening to my brain!" But Buffy only shrugged.

Xander hadn't considered before that this…thing, these feelings couldn't be traced and pinned back to the exact moment that Cordelia and Anya had cursed him, changed him, twisted his insides in some way that he still didn't even begin to understand. He hadn't considered that maybe nothing had really changed at all, that the curse had just given certain…feelings room to struggle their way to the surface.

So yeah, maybe there had been some signs that Xander should have been reading. Still, standing there with Buffy amidst the ruins of their adolescent prison, he wanted to balk at the term "gay," so definite and clear-cut. But instead he found that a warm happy bubble had encased his chest when she said the word, and he realized that it must be true. Or at least, that it made up a part of him that he knew was true. Watching the last fires burn themselves out, Xander came to the decision that he had to stop being so afraid of saying things out loud.

But he didn't have to start just yet. Especially since words were kind of the most difficult thing right now. So he gave Buffy a smile and a reassuring pat on the air above her shoulder, then turned away, toward home. He would go back and sleep. Then he would find Andrew. Then he would figure out the rest.


	8. In Which Xander Gets A Little Lost

In Which Xander Gets a Little More Lost, Then Mostly Finds Himself Again

He didn't find Andrew. His house was empty and his phone line disconnected and even Tucker didn't show up anyplace he wasn't supposed to, though Xander dutifully tracked everything that seemed like it could be a hastily patched together master plan for the first month of his last summer vacation ever.

Then he left. He had walked every inch of Sunnydale. It wasn't like there was anything else he could do but accept the truth. Andrew was probably dead, or a vampire, or fled from Sunnydale as fast as he could. And Xander had a life to be getting on with.

Xander got as far as Oxnard before the engine fell out of his car. He got a job at the Fabulous Ladies' Nightclub because it happened to be what his car had broken down in front of, and as he was leaning over the hood, shirt looped around his neck (it was hot out there), he heard a "Yoohoo!" and saw a woman leaning out the window.

"You keep hanging around looking like that and we're gonna put you to work!" she said, waving a fan at her heavily made-up face, and Xander thought (though he couldn't quite tell from there) that she was wearing one of those silky kimono robes, like that was an acceptable thing to be wearing at three in the afternoon on a Tuesday.

"You have an opening?" Xander asked, because he was already down to his last forty bucks (money goes fast when you only start out with around seventy, it turns out), and he'd heard that putting engines back in cars could be sort of expensive.

The woman winked at him. "Oh, honey, I've got several."

It turned out that her name was Zelda and she owned the club, which happened to be looking for a new dishwasher. So that was how Xander became a dishwasher at the Fabulous Ladies' Nightclub, and realized that he really did like dudes. That was, it wasn't just a fluke or a one-time thing. Which if Xander really thought about it, he guessed he'd known it all along. But that summer really confirmed it.

Because that summer, there was Rob.

He'd noticed Rob right away. Well, he'd noticed all of the boys right away, two hours into his first shift when they all came tramping through the kitchen, where Zelda was instructing Xander in the fine art of scrubbing a pot, to kiss her on the cheek and have their asses slapped as they walked by in a single-file line. Which seemed a pretty strange ritual, but Xander wasn't thinking too much about it because of the line of sparkly asses prancing mere inches from him.

He realized his mouth was open and shut it quickly.

It wasn't a surprise that Xander very quickly grew to very much like his new job, despite the way it made his hands feel raw and like they were about to flake off into nothingness. He got very good at evading Zelda's ass slaps, and after he was done cleaning the dinner dishes, she usually send him to linger in the back of the main room and clear people's tables when it seemed like they were done.

It soon became clear that the Fabulous Ladies' Nightclub couldn't keep a full-time busser on hand, because all the bussers were strippers. In fact, everyone was a stripper. Except Xander.

Okay, so maybe he did it just once. Marc was sick that day and there was no one to fill in for him, so Zelda'd come into the kitchen and thrown what Xander had thought was a shiny Christmas bow at him. Xander caught it against his chest and pulled it out to see that no, no it was certainly not a Christmas bow at all.

"Put it on," Zelda said. "You're dancing tonight."

"But I, but I—"

Excuses had never been any good when he was fighting evil, and they weren't any good now. In the end Xander had put on the thing barely recognizable as clothing, and the other guys had steered him onto the stage in front of a modest crowd of tipsy housewives and women Xander would have felt compelled to open doors for at supermarkets.

Of course, he was terrible as a stripper because no one could ever get close enough to slip a dollar bill into his embarrassingly tight speedo-esque undergarments, and eventually patrons started complaining about how often they were smacking themselves in the face (though Xander was pretty sure they thought this was due to something suspicious having been put in their drinks). Still, it was with relief that he stopped awkwardly gyrating to the music and ducked backstage again, where Zelda laughed her crackling laugh and said, "Well, we had to try."

Still, despite the horrendous embarrassment and failure, Xander's one-night stint as a stripper kind of ended up being the best thing about that summer. Or rather, it began the best thing about his summer.

Rob cornered him in the bathroom as he exited the stall after changing into something that covered more than ten percent of his body, stood with his arms crossed leaning against the sink (Rob, by the way, had not felt the same inclination to change out of the clinging pink garment that left nothing to the imagination. Not that Xander wanted it to), and said, "You've been hiding a lot under those Hawaiian shirts, Harris. Why so shy?" and Xander stuttered out something incomprehensible because of course he did.

Marc and Rob and all the guys had seemed to untouchable, on such a different level, that Xander hadn't even really bothered to think about any of them in a more-than-fantasy sort of way. But he was thinking about it now.

Not that he had much time to think before Rob was pushing him back into the stall he'd just left and removing most of the clothing he'd just managed to put back on.

After that, July and August were a rush of hands grabbing shirt collars and fingers exploring the contours of thighs and the shape of hips shifting against one another and Xander realizing that the kitchen counters were useful for far more things than just laying out drying racks.

But though Xander felt like he was riding a heady rushing wave all through the months and every night that Rob didn't have the late shift, something always made him stop, grab hold of Rob's hand before it went too far, push back when the slide of skin became too crushing, too close. It was like somehow he knew the wave couldn't last, that sooner or later he'd topple under. Like he knew this couldn't last, because it wasn't his real life.

And when September came, he packed up his new-engined car and kissed Rob and Zelda (air kisses, in her case) goodbye and drove north again.

xXx

"Hugging you now," Willow said, grinning ear to ear and wrapping her arms around herself. "See, this is me, giving you a big ol' hug." And Xander grinned too, and after explaining everything and being assured that it was fine he wasn't going to school and almost believing it, Oxnard felt almost like a dream that slips away as soon as you wake up, and he sort of wondered how he ever could have left. He was ready to get back to reality, and all the unrealistic things that came with it.

One of which, unfortunately, was Anya showing up one more time to ask about their relationship and tell him she couldn't stop thinking about him. Which was always how it seemed to go, the past dredging up the people he least wanted to see and depositing them at his doorstep while deviously holding back the face he still kept searching crowds for.

Not that Anya was all _that _bad, he considered. Not now, anyway. In another life with a different sort of Xander, he could see something happening. At least a casual friends-with-benefits sort of situation. She _was_ very pretty.

She stood in front of him and promised she'd remove the curse (or at least try, what with her powers being gone and all) if he would date her, and even though his heart leapt and then started hammering, and images flooded his mind: sliding his hands down the curves of some faceless girl, the feel of skin and closeness, the more he thought about it the further away the pictures became, the less he could feel the shapes of girl-bodies under his hands. And he looked at Anya, cocking her head to the side and pursing her lips, staring up at him, and thought that he didn't want it this way, anyway. Not with all that expectation, and a hope that could possibly end up dashed again months from now, and hurt even more from being dredged up and held onto again.

So he shook his head and said, "I'm sorry, Anya," and she twisted her mouth and gave him a considering look that he thought was trying to conceal a hurt one before turning on her heel and walking away. He kicked himself once she was gone for losing his last chance, but even the kicking felt fake. He was kind of happy, to be honest, it was kind of a huge relief, now that the choice had been taken from him—he had no choice but to accept that this was who he was now. And it didn't bother him nearly as much as he'd thought it would.

xXx

A few days later, Xander got a job in the campus bar and tagged along behind Buffy and Willow and talked too loud in the hopes that at least one of them would turn to look at him, because it was starting to feel like they'd gotten a little _too_ used to him being gone. "Nothing can defeat the penis!" Xander said, then, "Sorry, too loud, very unseemly," and Buffy and Willow looked at him and Willow shook her head and Buffy said, "Yeah, we know how you feel, Xand. That's the problem."

It was a lonely sort of fall, and Xander kept getting flashes of a very particular kind of loneliness whenever he least expected it. He felt a twinge when he dressed up like James Bond for Halloween and remembered Andrew telling him he looked like Timothy Dalton, on prom night, and he took a moment to hope that wherever Andrew was, whatever realm he ended up in, he was happy. Though he ruined the beautiful contemplativeness of said moment when his next thought was about how yeah, that was all well and good, but really it'd probably be easier for everyone, Andrew included, if he were right here in Sunnydale where he belonged. Not that Sunnydale was all that great. But Xander figured it was almost definitely better than being dead. Which brought on a whole new sort of twinge, a worse one, and Xander bit his lip.

The gang (when they remembered that he was alive) was still doing the we're-super-cool-and-accepting-of-everything-you-a re-or-may-choose-to-be-Xander routine, which Xander appreciated, mostly. But sometimes he said things without thinking about them, things that make him remember that even though the gang loved him all unconditionally and stuff, things were different now in some imperceptible way. Like when he and Buffy visited the Initiative and he said, "Holy moly, I get it now. Can I have sex with Riley too?" and Buffy looked at him sharply and he had to quickly add, "Not really! Not really into the big and the muscles and the square jaw and the possibly evil." And it was true, but he thought, he wouldn't have had to say that before.

Or like that time when the frat house was haunted by unsexy spirits and they tracked down Giles singing at the Espresso Pump, and Xander said, "Can we go back to the haunted house? Because this is freaking me out." And it was freaking him out, how attracted he was to Giles in that moment. But never, never again. Xander shuddered. Never again. Facing nervous breakdown like whoa.

So yeah, there were some definitely low points. Another was when he got fired from the gay phone sex hotline, which, fair enough, Xander knew his dirty talk just wasn't that good, but it still stung. He spared a moment to almost wish that Anya would pop back up again. He bet she could teach him a thing or two. Theoretical knowledge only, of course, but still.

And then of course they found out that Willow was gay too, and Xander shook his head and wondered what the use of being gay himself was if he didn't even get good gaydar out of it. Well, he guessed there were a _few _uses. But still.

Overall, though, things were kinda quiet on the fighting-evil front that year, or at least, pretty quiet on the Buffy-needing-Xander's-help-to-fight-evil front until Adam finally made his big move in the spring. Was it his fault that he had to find some way to distract himself?

So he flirted with and got rejected by and made out with people at the Bronze and at college parties, but every time, when it came to that point, he was afraid to tell anybody his real name or go anywhere with them. He'd been burned before, and he always turned away before anything real could happen, as though this was still just a temporary arrangement (even though he long-ago accepted that it wasn't), something he'd look back on and regret, as if making out in bars or nightclub kitchens was okay but the minute he fell onto someone else's mattress at night that would make all of this real, and irreversible.

At some point Xander wondered when he was going to stop making excuses to himself, stop acting like this was something he was being driven to, and start admitting that he really liked the slide of muscle and bone under his hands, scruff against his cheek, hands bigger than his grasping his lower back.

And after they finally defeated Adam (together, finally all of them coming together and it felt like they understood each other better than they had in years), in between dreams of Buffy's mom and the Initiative watching him pee (and he'd rather never think of _that _ever again, thank you very much), Xander dreamed of Andrew.

Andrew, cocking his head and pursing his lips, gesturing Xander forward, on and on down the upstairs hallway in the Summers' house while Andrew took careful steps backward, the smile on his face growing wider and wider until he finally turned, darted around a corner and started running. Xander ran full-out after him, but Andrew was quick, faster and lighter on his feet, leaping up into the air for long airborne flights down the hallway that Xander couldn't match. Until they reached the end, the hallway cut off into open air, a precipice and the dark sky. Then Andrew turned around again, smiling still but with a finger to his lips. "When you see, don't tell," he said, and then took one more leap, out, out into the open air. The wind whipped Xander's face as he peered over the edge, stomach flat against the carpet. But Andrew wasn't anywhere, though he thought he saw something else just out of the corner of his eye.


	9. In Which Xander Is the Butt Monkey

In Which Xander Is the Butt Monkey

"You gotta be with movin' forward," Xander kept thinking to himself that summer, and then kept wondering where _that _came from. But it was true.

And it sort of happened, the moving forward, though not at all in any way Xander was expecting.

One day it was all hangin' out on the beach, sidekicking and trying not to get burned to death by Willow and her magic fingers, trying not to gaze with envy and disgruntlement at the fact that he was the fifth wheel again, and then next everything was topsy-turvy crazy times.

Which…actually wasn't new at all.

But what happened next was.

One minute it was all nighttime strolls in the cemetery with ice cream, just like usual, and the next there was Dracula, acting all superior and telling Xander he had no interest in him. Well, that was all right. Xander didn't have any interest in him either, except in watching Buffy drive a stake through his heart. Though that _was_ a nice cape.

And when he thought about it later, Dracula _did_ have penetrating eyes (not that there was any excuse for Buffy to use the word "penetration." Especially to Riley. I mean, Xander guessed he saw what Buffy saw in Riley, but he wasn't anybody Xander would have thought about, really. No, overall, he thought he preferred someone slimmer. With a well-cut cape. Man, Andrew would have freaked to see Dracula, Xander thought, then realized with an almost-shock that this was the first time he'd thought about Andrew all day.)

And he wasn't thinking about Andrew at all once Dracula put up his hand in Xander's front yard, his mouth sneering but, when Xander looked closer, his lips seeming oh-so-soft, and said, "You will be my emissary," and talked about serving him and rewards, and Xander had to bite his tongue against asking if that was some sort of innuendo because all of a sudden (okay, not _that _all of a sudden) he wanted it to be. Even if Dracula did think he was strange and off-putting. But hey, maybe Dracula meant that in a fond way and just didn't know how to give it the right inflection. Maybe it was a language thing.

Dracula showed up in Xander's basement room at about four am, waking him out of a snoring sleep. He sniffed and looked disdainful and said, "This room smells overwhelmingly of bleach. I detest that smell," and then told Xander to bring Buffy to him at sundown tomorrow. As he was getting ready to sweep out, Xander stood up. What he meant to do he didn't know. After all, it wasn't like he could have stopped Dracula. He just knew he didn't want him to leave.

Dracula turned way faster than any normal person could have turned and was a foot from Xander's face before he had a chance to say, "Wait."

"You are wanting," Dracula said, and he reached out, barely touched Xander's cheek, let his hand trail down to Xander's neck.

"What do you mean?" Xander asked, heart speeding up and voice coming out squeaky. "You mean wanting like lacking, like I'm not worthy? Because that's true, Master, I'm not worthy of you."

"True," Dracula said carelessly. "Though there is something about you that intrigues me, strange as you are. But that is not what I meant. I meant that you are _wanting_." His eyes lifted from Xander's face and trailed downward, and Xander looked down too and saw what Dracula meant.

"Oh…yeah," he said. "That happens sometimes. Sorry."

Dracula looked back into his eyes, staring deep. "You do not even know," he said finally, still gazing at Xander. "You have never. You do not even know what your body is capable of. Yet you long to."

"Oh yes, very much so, your Dark Princeness," Xander said. "I mean, obviously."

Dracula glanced at the window, then at the glowing green alarm clock next to Xander's bed, as if he was deciding something. Then he said, "Yes, I have the time."

"Time for what?" Xander said, playing dumb because his heart was beating in his chest and the blood was pulsing…other places, and he didn't want to assume but Dracula was right, he _wanted_.

Dracula reached up his beautiful hands and unclasped his cape, and it billowed to the floor way more gracefully than it had any right to, and then he stepped closer to Xander. Xander could see the muscles in his forearm flexing as his fingers closed around Xander's wrist. Then Dracula pushed him back, seemingly effortlessly, and he fell onto the bed.

"You do not seem like much," Dracula said, "I did not think you were. But there is something else in you that few have seen. You will do things."

"Great things?" Xander asked hopefully.

Dracula shrugged. "Perhaps." He pushed Xander further into the mattress, his fingers splayed and hard against Xander's chest. "Right now you will do one thing."

"Yes, Master," Xander said.

Dracula didn't talk much more after that, and he didn't smile, not even when Xander made a joke about staking that he thought, while perhaps not the _most_ original, was still solid good punning. And after a while Xander stopped talking too, because there was too much to feel, the press of Dracula's body on him, his touch ashy and soft until it turned firm and the basement was getting hotter and hotter and _oh_. And then Xander couldn't think about anything at all.

After, Dracula glanced out the window again, then stood up and Xander did too, draping Dracula's cape around his shoulders without being asked. Then Dracula dissolved into mist without kissing Xander goodnight and floated out the window over the dryer.

Xander wondered if he should feel different now, unvirginized. He wondered if he would when he woke up. He wondered if he would have been attracted to Dracula if he wasn't under the spell of those eyes and those hands. He wondered how Dracula got his hair so perfect. Maybe he used some special kind of conditioner?

Maybe Xander needed to stop thinking about Dracula like some sort of _crazy person_.

He didn't feel crazy, though. The next day he felt sort of dreamy and hazy, but mostly he just felt happy, complete in a way he hadn't felt in a long time, maybe ever. Like he had something to do, and someone who _really_ needed him. Not that he didn't think Buffy and Willow needed him, in a way. But Dracula's way made a lot more sense. Plus, neither Buffy or Willow had eyes like that.

Still, he did notice himself doing crazy things, like talking about Dracula being intimate and how blood is life, and squashing bugs and asking Buffy matter-of-factly if she was cool with him bringing her to the Dark Master. But suddenly he just felt so _hungry_, and jelly doughnuts really weren't doing it for him.

He tried not to feel hurt when Dracula dismissed him with a "Leave us" and not even a wave of the hand, before Xander had time to say that he didn't even need immortality, if that was the sticking point. He'd be more than fine with just another steamy de-caping as far as rewards went. Especially after seeing Dracula standing by the fire in that _vest_ with his hair swept back like that. It _did_ things to Xander, and he wasn't sure if that was just how thralls worked, but he found that he didn't really care.

He waited just outside the door, trying to hear what Dracula was saying to Buffy, if he was seducing her, but he couldn't hear a thing. When he finally heard a noise it was coming from behind him, out in the hallway. And then Riley punched him, and Xander liked Riley, he really did, it wasn't like the guy was Angel or anything, but that was just uncalled for.

When he came to, he felt different. His head felt clearer, all the dreamy floatiness gone. The soreness was still there, though, and some heat still coiled in Xander's stomach. Not enough to make him sure that he would have wanted all the vamp sex if he hadn't been under Dracula's thrall. But enough to make him wonder.

Apparently he was still a little crazy though, using words like "man bitch" and "butt monkey" and he hoped that nobody would notice. But nah, he didn't think that anyone would really think him and Dracula getting together was a possibility. Nobody would suspect that Xander had been making time with the original Dracu-babe himself.

Not that he would ever use that name for the Dark Mas—for Dracula again. Ever. Not even next time his mother washed the whites and he was alone in the basement with the smell of bleach.

So yeah, Xander thought. So he'd lost his virginity to Dracula. So what? It was actually kind of cool. Kinda like something he would brag about, in the alternate universe where he told anyone about this ever. Also pretty creepy, and in his weaker moments Xander had to stop himself from imagining what number in a long line of virgins he was to Dracula. But kind of cool.


	10. In Which Xander Gains Experience Points

In Which Xander Gains Some More (Okay, Pretty Odd) Experience Points

Things were better now, way better than they were last year, but sometimes Xander felt like he still didn't quite belong in the group. It wasn't like he didn't know that Buffy and Willow and Giles would always be there for him, would always want to be his friend, but sometimes it just felt like they didn't want him _right now_. Dawnie always wanted him around, sure, even though she knew she couldn't touch him any more than the other girls could. Maybe that was the appeal, Xander though. The "safe" guy. That was him.

Maybe, Xander thought, it was something to do with the fact that they were all coupled off now, and he wasn't. As he listened to his parents breaking things upstairs (honestly, it was a wonder they even had anything left to be breaking, at this point) and listened to Riley cough awkwardly and then tease Buffy, he wished _he _had somebody to sit below him, someone whose shoulders he could rub and who could pat his knee comfortingly when the yelling got unbearable.

Man, he _really_ needed to get his own place.

But when it came time to actually do that, he awkwardly waved at the realtor instead of shaking her hand, and she was obviously much more impressed with Riley than him, and he suspected she would be plotting how to make a move right now if he wasn't holding onto Buffy's hand so tight. God, always with the hand-holding.

Then of course his evil twin had to show up and start taking over his life, striding around with his hair all slicked back and awesome and hey, was that really what he looked like from the back? Xander never knew his back was all broad and stuff, with an ass that never felt as tight when it was actually attached to him than it looked on someone else.

When he was crouching on the floor outside the apartment that should have been his, he heard the real estate lady coming on to the other him and thought bitterly that probably, being an evil twin, even though the other Xander looked like him he could probably touch her if he wanted. Not that Xander really wanted to. Her lips were way too red and her hair was sort of pointy and he didn't really think that suit was doing much for her.

And just as the guy, the other Xander, was leaving the apartment, Xander crept out from around the corner (very sneakily, if he did say so himself). Then he yelled, "Yaaa" and jumped on the other him's back. Which maybe ruined the sneaky vibe he'd been going for, but it was too great an opportunity to pass up.

And also then the other Xander punched him, which really wasn't how he'd planned on this going at all.

"I won't let you do this!" he yelled from the floor.

For a second, it looked like the other guy was just going to run away. He looked scared. But then a "What's going on out there?" came from the apartment across the hall, and the guy looked sharply at Xander and then seemed to make a decision. "Get up," he said. "In here," and he opened the door to what should have been Xander's apartment with the keys he'd just gotten.

Xander cautiously stood up and followed him, leaning back against the door and keeping his hand on the doorknob, just in case he needed to make a speedy exit.

The guy turned on him, whip-fast, and pushed him up against the wall, twisting his collar in his hand. "Why'd you steal my face?"

"What?" Xander said, flabbergasted. (And a little bit short of breath, because it wasn't like people pushed him up against walls every day of the week. At least, not since the summer and Rob.) "You stole _my_ face. You're my evil twin!"

The guy took a step back, seeming a little flustered himself. "No I'm not. You're _my_ evil twin."

Xander was confused, and worse than that, he found his mind wandering, eyes sliding up and down the other Xander, and he'd never realized how good his hair could look all slicked back like that, and wow, he should wear button-up shirts that weren't three sizes too big more often. And when he finally made his way to the guy's face, Xander was surprised to see that the guy was eying him just as intently.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing!" the guy said quickly, looking away. "It's just, I never really looked at myself quite like this, you know?"

"I was just thinking the same thing!" Xander said, and laughed, and the other guy started laughing too. And then Xander realized abruptly that he was laughing with his evil twin. He'd never noticed how his eyes crinkled up like that when he laughed, and Xander had never really thought himself to be an attractive guy, but all of a sudden…

And maybe it was that, or the fact that Xander knew what he was missing now, thanks to Dracula, and suddenly the lack of sex in his life was a million times more devastating than it had ever been before, or maybe he was going a little crazy, what with the evil twin thing and all. But one of those things surely explained what Xander did next. Which was, instead of punching the evil demon who'd stolen his face, or running away and finding Buffy, saying, "Hey," soft and slow, and taking a step toward the other guy.

He must have recognized something in Xander's voice, because his eyes went wide and then narrowed, and then his mouth turned up a little bit at the corners, uncertain, and Xander almost felt like he didn't even need to say what he said next.

But he said it anyway. "Hey, so, I know you're, like, super evil and stuff, but we're never gonna get this chance again, right?"

And the guy said, "I mean, I know this is probably just part of some evil ploy to kill me…"

And Xander said, "I could say the same thing about you."

And the guy said, "But," and took another step forward.

And Xander said, "Yeah…" and licked his lips.

And then they were on each other, and it felt so strange to be grasping his own hair, sliding his hands down his own chest, unbuckling the same belt he'd had for six years now, a weird out of body experience that Xander had never in a million years dreamed he would have.

It was weird, Xander knew that, thought it in the back of his head as his garbage-stained shirt was ripped off him. But it was also _good_, which helped with pushing those thoughts away. After all, Xander knew what his body liked, and maybe it was part of the evil demon magic that his twin seemed to know too, and so Xander told himself to ignore the weird and just enjoy it, because this was probably the only action he was going to get in the near (or distant) future unless he decided to take a spontaneous trip to Transylvania or something.

And after, as he drifted off into a satisfied sleep, he thought, _Maybe this guy isn't evil after all. Maybe there's some other explanation, even for that shiny thing he keeps flashing._

But when he woke up, the other guy was gone.

Then of course it turned out that he wasn't an evil twin after all, just a split-off part of Xander's essence or something—Xander kind of stopped listening at some point. Not because of how the other Xander's shirt collar was flipped under and showing a patch of neck or anything. No, other reasons. Other reasons were the reason he wasn't paying attention.

Xander was starting to realize the extent to which living in Sunnydale could really mess with your sexuality. No wonder Buffy was always going for the fangy ones.

After they'd, ahem, checked out some stuff in the car on the way to the magic shop, and after Giles did his spelly thing to put them back together again, Xander thought to ask whether the curse would have stuck to both of them. Anya's curse, that was. "Perhaps not," Giles said, taking off his glasses and scrunching his eyebrows consideringly at Xander. "It's possible the Toth's curse would have considered a preexisting curse to simply be another aspect of your personality and siphoned it into one or another of you. Did you try to, um…touch any women while under the curse?"

"No!" Xander said. "I was too busy going after myself! That is, I mean, getting on my own tail…I mean, following myself! Trying to solve the mystery!"

Giles gave him a look that was less considering and more pitying, mixed with something Xander couldn't quite pin down, maybe something like secret amusement. But that was pretty much just another day on the Hellmouth.

xXx

It seemed like he spent much of the rest of that fall trailing after Riley on patrol (and holding himself back from reaching out to grab that ass. Buffy was one lucky lady in that department) and fighting a sort of distant crush on him that he suspected was made up in large part of being relieved that Buffy had picked somebody way less evil (and less mean) than Angel this time. And better looking too, Xander thought, not being so much just one big forehead. And though lXander privately thought that_ he_ had handled being useless and un-powerful much more gracefully than Riley, overall…even so, he was still the best guy Buffy had ever dated, by a long shot.

But he felt a little twinge when he told Buffy to go after him, not to let him go. Because there was a tiny, selfish piece of Xander that knew his crush on Riley would only get bigger if Riley came back, and an even tinier part that whispered that he could love Riley better than Buffy could. But that wasn't even on the table, obviously, and besides, Xander didn't think he would even know where to begin with big scary feelings-monster kind of love. So maybe it was best (for all of them, maybe for Buffy most of all, because if Xander was honest he wasn't sure she was ready for another big scary either) that Riley left anyway.

But even with the realization that he wasn't exactly ready for something real, like, god forbid, a mature adult relationship, Xander was glad when he could say that he'd had sex with people besides himself and Dracula.

As the months passed and Dawn got kidnapped every other week and then they realized she was connected to some great mystical something (because who _wasn't_, around here, except for Xander), there were others, too. A few one-night stands at bars he wasn't quite old enough to be in, in cities not his own so no one would know (he even went to LA once; now _that _was a horrifying experience). Not that he was ashamed of being gay (he guessed he might as well get used to the fact, because it had definitely been true for a while), but Xander was certainly ashamed of going to bars where there were more men wearing glitter than not. Then there was that guy who was only into him when he was dressed up as an army guy, but that only lasted a couple of weeks and there was no need to go into that whole thing, really. Xander would kind of rather not think about how weird _that_ had started to get.

But nothing too noteworthy, and mostly Xander concerned himself with helping to save the world through the power of research and being secretly thankful that even lady vampires couldn't come within a foot of him without bouncing away again, which came in particularly handy whenever Harmony decided to come to town.


	11. In Which It Was Just the One Time!

In Which It Was Just the One Time!

The year went on, and Riley left and Spike started hanging around a lot more and Joyce got sick and it seemed like every bad thing that could happen was happening. Not that Spike hanging around was all bad, of course. Turned out he was pretty good at sacrificing himself to save the group when he put his mind to it. It was just a little awkward, because of…

It started at the Bronze, as so many things in Xander's life seemed to. Well, really it started with the way Xander had started noticing the angles of Spike's face and his flat stomach and skinny legs under his leather jacket, all of which somehow gathered together into something quite attractive, though Xander tried to quash those thoughts whenever they came up. A crush on Riley had been bad enough. Attraction to Spike, now that was unthinkable.

"Spike," he said, at the Bronze. "Don't let me stop you from not being here."

"Now why would I go, when it's bothering you so much having me here," he said, and came to sit down next to Xander. When Xander really just wanted to be alone. Willow had been snappy lately, and Buffy was prone to burst into tears thinking that Willow and Tara were about to break up, and he just wanted a break from it all, from being shoulder-to-cry-on Xander.

But Spike wouldn't leave him alone, so Xander made comments about impaling himself on a fork and tried not to think evocative things when Spike started talking about eating him. He knew that wasn't what Spike meant, god. It was just his stupid brain, which still wanted to think about sex once every twelve seconds. Xander had thought it was bad when he was seventeen, but was so much worse now that he'd had it, so much harder not to imagine it all the time, now he knew for sure where all the parts went and whatnot.

Then he had to go and slap Spike's hand away from his peanuts, which was a mistake, because deliberate human (not that Spike counted as "human," really) contact had been in short supply lately, what with Giles in England and hanging out with ladies all day every day. When their skin connected, Xander felt a shock run through his fingertips and tried to shake it off.

It was bad enough when Spike started asking questions about Buffy, who he seemed to be getting even more obsessed with lately. Probably just trying to figure out some weakness, some way around his chip thing so he could attack her when she least expected it. God, if there was such a thing as a complex about reclaiming one's evil, then Spike definitely had it. But it was worse when he stopped, when he just started sending Xander side-eyed glances over his beer, and suddenly Xander found that he was _talking_ to Spike, confiding in him and playing pool like it was something he did all the time, like Spike wasn't a horrible evil vampire with angelically beautiful cheekbones. And then they started complaining about women. And then Xander was having _thoughts_, and he didn't like that, not one bit.

But luckily, just as Spike was getting very close to him indeed, a troll showed up, and Xander knew he'd dodged a bullet there.

Which didn't stop him from putting himself directly in the path of the next one.

A week or two later, Xander ran into Spike in the Summers' front yard. Or, not really ran into; when he saw Xander coming, Spike hastily dropped his cigarette to the ground and loudly ducked behind a tree. Perhaps Spike had thought he was being stealthy (he always seemed to consider himself rather sneakier than he actually turned out to be though), because when Xander circled the tree and said, "And what the hell do you think you're doing here, Spike?" in a pleasant voice, Spike scowled and said, "Damn."

Xander raised his eyebrows, waiting for something else, something snappy and British, but nothing came. Looking at him up close, it was easy to see how drawn Spike looked, how tired (did vampires even get tired?) and sad. "So…" Xander said, "What are you doing here? Not to pry too deeply into the creepy brains of creepy people."

Up close, tired and sad, Spike looked softer somehow, the tiny wrinkles around his eyes and the cut of his jaw blurred slightly in the dim light emanating from inside the house.

And it wasn't like Xander hadn't had…thoughts before this. Like that time Spike spent the night tied up in his room, and flounced around looking better than Xander in Xander's clothes and calling him a bloody poof all the time, mouth curled up like the words gave him extra pleasure to say. But never acting-on-it kinds of thoughts! Until that night, when he saw Spike so alone and soft (and, okay, yeah, creepy) standing outside, and just wanted to reach out his hand and smudge the ashy skin of Spike's cheek. Which he recognized was weird, and he was definitely going to stop thinking thoughts like that right now.

"Just…out for a stroll," Spike said, wincing slightly, and looked through nearly-closed eyes at Xander, as if hoping, but not truly believing, he'd buy it.

"Just…spying on Buffy, you mean." Xander had been right, back at the Bronze. He was definitely searching for a weakness, definitely planning _something_.

"I don't know _what_ you mean," Spike said loftily, and Xander rolled his eyes.

"Okay, fine, whatever," he said.

"And what are you doing?" Spike asked, pushing off the tree so Xander had to take a step back, farther from the porch light, deeper into the shadows. "Just out on a nighttime stroll of your own then, are you?" He reached out and poked his fingertips into Xander's chest, not hard enough to hurt, but almost. "Sure you're not here checking up on our girl same as me, eh? I knew she used to give you the warm fuzzies but I didn't know it was still that way."

Xander stared at him, wondering if Spike had finally gone around the bend or was perhaps having some sort of mild manic episode. "Um, no," he said slowly. "I was actually invited here. Also perhaps you'll recall that I _can't touch women,_ so no."

Spike stopped advancing on him, and Xander looked behind himself to realize that they'd gone almost full circle, with Xander's back now to the tree. Spike looked up at the sky for a moment, then back at Xander. "Come to think of it, I did forget. Sorry, mate, had other things on my mind, is all."

Xander shook his head. Spike was so bizarre, how he could go from openly hostile to acting like he almost wanted to be friends with you in half a second. "Don't worry about it," he said.

Spike laughed. "No, you're the one that should be worried! How long's that been going on for, anyway?"

"Two years," Xander answered, with a sort of twist in his gut, a surprise. He hadn't realized it had been quite that long.

Spike laughed again. Yes, sometimes he really was not very nice at all. "That's a rough lot," he said.

"I guess so," Xander said. "Somehow I will prevail."

"You're probably better off without 'em, anyway," Spike continued, apparently taking this as an invitation to _keep talking_ to Xander, like they were buddies out for a drink instead of two guys talking in someone's front yard, someone who didn't even know one of them was there. "Women. Right awful, they are. Selfish. Never give you what you want anyway." He looked up toward the second floor of the house, probably checking to make sure Buffy hadn't caught on to his (terrible) sneaking yet.

"Yeah," Xander said. He shrugged, "I guess I wouldn't really know. But like you said, probably better off without them, right?" Sometimes, more and more often lately, Xander felt that way. In the beginning, he'd still had dreams about girls, hadn't been able to stop himself from looking whenever Buffy wore one of those low-cut shirts, or one of the ones without a back. But now his dreams were overwhelmingly filled with smooth planes and square angles, muscles and ridges.

"I know," Spike said, looking up toward the house again. "It's just, I've got the wanting, you know?"

It was almost a whine, and Xander started to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Part of it was that he really didn't want to hear about _any_ of Spike's wantings, didn't want this to become a thing, the two of them talking, but part of it was also that Xander was starting to experience some wanting of his own.

"Well, you should probably take your wanting somewhere else," Xander said shortly, suddenly wondering why he'd let this conversation go on even this long. It almost certainly had nothing to do with the way Spike's face looked, half in shadow like that, or the angle of his arms beneath his jacket.

"Don't know why you're all high and mighty," Spike drawled, turning his head liquid-quick to fix his eyes on Xander. "It's not like you're getting any either."

Xander opened his mouth to protest. But this was undoubtedly true, so he closed it again. The thrill of nightclubs and anonymity had started wearing off, sometime around the time they'd found Joyce's tumor and Xander had realized that probably if he was going to die tomorrow he didn't want to spend any more nights with strangers.

"Thought so," Spike said, and finally, finally turned to go.

Only to trip on a tree root and fall headlong into Xander, pushing them both back up against the tree trunk, which was rough against Xander's back, even through his jacket.

Which Spike grabbed trying to right himself, and Xander found himself pinned, his breath caught. And then he heard himself saying, "Oh Spike, I never knew you felt this way, it would have changed everything," because stupid Xander, even in a crisis (okay, perhaps "crisis" was too strong a word, but "moment of sexual and moral confusion" didn't have quite the same ring), he had to go and make a joke.

Spike pushed himself upright, started to scoff but then, as he took a step back, seemed to reconsider. He gave Xander a long look, up and down, and Xander found that even though he was no longer pinned to the tree, he couldn't move. His stomach had started doing things, leaping and twisting. Then Spike said, "Well, why not? You're not a bad looking bloke, now you've let your hair grow out."

Xander stammered, "What? You…like men?"even though he'd sort of half-guessed it, given all the weird energy between the two of them when Angel had been in town. (It was always Angel. What was it about that forehead that people found so appealing?)

Then Spike did scoff. "What, you think just because I'm old and English that I'm not open-minded? A shag's a shag."

And then he pushed Xander back up against the tree again.

And that was that.

In Xander's defense, he really hadn't gotten any in quite a while. And Spike really was quite attractive.

Still, after it was over, though Spike squeezed his shoulder almost tenderly (for Spike), Xander was sure it would never happen again. He didn't think being insulted mid-fuck was quite his kind of kink, after all.


	12. In Which There Was a Second Time Too

In Which, Okay, Maybe There Was a Second Time Too

He figured he and Spike were on the same page regarding let-us-never-speak-of-this-again, but still, he made sure to be a little extra rude, call Spike "Evil Dead" and kick him out of his seat at the Bronze, the next time he saw him, just in case. And if Spike retaliated by taking his change, well, it wasn't the first time Xander had been robbed by someone he'd slept with.

Still, an effort had to be made. "Listen, bleach boy," Xander said, "I don't have a chip in my head. I can do far more damage to you than you can do to me." At that, Spike grinned that biting-back grin of his, the one that promised something delicious and taboo. "Oh yeah?" he said, "I think I managed to do plenty of damage the other night." But then while Xander was blushing, Spike looked off over his shoulder and walked away.

And of course, soon after that the whole gang found out that Spike had a crush on Buffy, which seemed to make the whole thing in all its incarnations rather a moot point. And was kind of hilarious, completely separate from everything else. Because it was one thing for the bad guy to go after the gay sidekick. It was quite another for him to go after the hero destined to stake his kind. And not in the fun way.

But it didn't stop Xander remembering. Hell, even finding out in an official capacity that Spike had a crush on Buffy and Team Scooby becoming Team We Hate Spike didn't stop the thoughts. And sure, maybe in grief he said some words about Spike's doomed obsession with Buffy, but he really was a pretty decent guy, if you forgot the whole evil killer bit. I mean, he left flowers for Joyce, which was a nice gesture if nothing else.

It didn't stop the thoughts, and it didn't stop Xander from feeling a painful twang in his chest when he saw Spike and Buffy having sex in the cemetery.

He couldn't stop the way his heart beat fast and his breath got all tangled up in his throat when he went to confront Spike in his crypt, and then he found that he'd balled Spike's (stupid, black, so-tight-you-could-see-every-muscle-rippling-under neath-it) t-shirt up in his fists and was pushing him against the wall.

Spike dropped his cigarette. "O-ho," he said, "So it's like that then, is it?" his mouth twisting up in that way that was extremely infuriating and not at all attractive.

Xander stepped back, let go of Spike's shirt, wrung his hands like he was shaking water off them. "Like what?"

"You're a jealous boy, aren't you?" and when Xander started to talk, Spike talked right over him. "Don't want to do it again, don't want to sully your heroic little fingers touching me again, but you don't anyone else to do it either, is that it?"

"No!" Xander said. And that_ wasn't_ it, not exactly. I mean, yeah, true, the thing with Spike had been a mistake, Xander knew that. But he didn't feel gross about it, like he did sometimes, after, with some people. It hadn't been _bad_.

But it wasn't about that. It was about how Spike had feelings for Buffy and she didn't have them for him, and she was confused right now, and they were both going to end up getting hurt in the end.

Xander meant to say all that, meant to articulate himself beautifully and then sweep out of the crypt, but all he managed was a "You—" before Spike smirked and bent to pick up his still smoldering cigarette from the ground, flicking dirt off it and turning away.

"Don't worry," Spike said, "This thing with Buffy, you don't need to worry about it." Then he turned around and his voice changed a little, got more strained, "Or tell her, monkey boy, you hear me? She doesn't need to know you saw us. Only upset her, that will."

He turned to go again, then looked back over his shoulder, like an afterthought. "Not that this leaves you out of it, you know. My doors always open, if you've ever got a fancy." Spike raised an eyebrow, and Xander didn't know what to say to that at all.

Luckily (or, actually, extremely not, given that this was Sunnydale and nothing good ever happened when someone barged in at an opportune moment), Glory's minions showed up then, so Xander didn't have to say anything at all.

Later, with Buffy, he tried to play it cool though. Which, of course, because it was Xander, meant that he acted completely ridiculously, and he was almost sure the gang was about to figure it all out.

"No one is judging you. It's understandable," Xander said. "Spike is strong, and mysterious, and sort of compact but well-muscled."

"I am not having sex with Spike!" Buffy said, then with a sardonic twist, "but I'm starting to think you might be."

Xander tried to laugh like that was absurd, though he wasn't sure he was entirely successful, then turned away and shook his head. It had just been the _one time_. That didn't make it "having sex with." It wasn't like it was _ever _going to happen again. Even if it did turn out that Spike was kinda a good guy after all. In the very strict sense of not-betraying-Dawn-to-the-evil-Hellgod-bent-on-her -destruction, anyway.

xXx

And, okay, maybe it happened one other time. Just one other time! And really, you had to blame the situation, a ragtag band running from evil in a dumpy Winnebago. Xander had known it was dangerous from the start (both because Glory was after them and because Spike looked sort of adorable in those ridiculous driving goggles), and so maybe that was why he'd tried to convince Buffy that having Spike along wasn't a good idea. But Buffy was having none of it, and Spike sent him an almost hurt look, at least, as near as Xander could tell from behind the goggles. But then Spike was the one talking later about wanting to go off with just Buffy and Dawn, so Xander figured they were even.

You had to blame the atmosphere, the dark and the grime of that abandoned gas station where they all ended up hiding from the dudes in the crusade outfits (there was such a nice unbelievable ring to all of Xander's stories, he'd found), the broken glass and the feeling of impending doom all around and the sight of Spike struggling with his lighter.

Xander didn't quite know what made him do it, what made him follow Spike after he rolled his eyes at Ben and Buffy and went into the other room, what made him step back himself and close the door, but he was pretty sure he was gonna blame the atmosphere.

Spike and his lighter, and Xander knew that it was ever only a physical attraction with Spike (well, mostly), but holding out the flame for him, Spike's head dipping toward Xander's hands, it really was pretty damn hot.

So he made some pretty poor jokes and said, "Have I mentioned today how much I don't like you?" to lessen the likelihood that Spike would realize what he'd just been thinking. But then, sometimes Spike just seemed to _know_ things.

"Might have let it slip in, once or twice," he said with that one-tooth-showing smile, and Xander tried very very hard not to think about anything _slipping in_ anywhere.

"How're your feelers?" Xander asked, and Spike's grin grew feral and wider.

"I might be able to slip them in once or twice, if that's what you're asking," he said, and see, there it was, Spike reading his mind, or maybe just thinking the very same thing he was. Spike pushed himself off the ledge and sauntered (it was the only word for it really) to stand right in front of Xander. Too close, and Xander knew he should be thinking about Buffy, about Dawn (not like _that_), about Captain Crusade tied up _right there_ (he was facing the other way but surely he could still hear everything they were saying), but he couldn't quite manage it.

"On the other hand," Spike went on, bringing his hands up and wiggling them innocently, "They're still a mite tingly. Might be better if I slip in something else." And Xander's breath caught and he was having those stomach feelings again, the coiling heat and the knowledge that goddamn, Spike might be a jerk sometimes but he sure knew how to seduce someone. He sure knew exactly the right words to say, exactly the way to flip open a button and unzip a zipper quicker than you could think, exactly the right way to touch to make Xander arch into him and almost forget where they were and the way everything was falling apart around them.

So yeah, he had sex with Spike in a disgusting gas station, in full hearing of a creepy old school (_seriously _old school) general. It was a very stressful situation! And Xander was definitely not going to make himself feel bad about it. Especially because this time, after, there was a moment of almost peace (Xander almost wanted to call it _kinship_) between him and Spike, when Spike pulled him upright and started to help Xander brush himself off before wincing, remembering his hands again. And Xander turned Spike's hands over in his, pressed the dishtowel-bandages back into place gently, and Spike looked at him with something like surprise and said, quiet and a little gruff, "Thanks, mate. I needed that," and Xander laughed and said, "Yeah, me too."

xXx

After that, things seemed to really be over between them. For real this time. I mean, there was the brief punching fight they had over whether Buffy liked it rough, for one thing. And even though Spike definitely slapped his ass right after he slapped Xander's head in the hospital (it wasn't his fault he couldn't remember Ben was Glory!) and even though Spike looked at him with his lips peeled back and said, "Impressive," when Xander stabbed that lizard guy, breathed hard like he was maybe just a little bit turned on, they certainly didn't have time for anything else that night. Though when they were down in the basement looking for the Dagon Sphere they found the Buffybot, which led to Spike making lewd suggestions, which led to Xander having a _brilliant _idea, which led to them having sex anyway. But that was really the last time. They had a world and a Dawn to save, after all.

And then after they saved Dawn and brought Buffy back from the dead, everything seemed just a little brighter before it started to get dark again. That night, the night they brought Buffy back, Xander found Spike leaning up against the tree in the Summers' front yard again, looking more tired than Xander had ever seen him. He said something about Spike's Buffy obsession starting up again, trying to be light and obviously failing. And then Spike shoved him up against the tree, but in such a different way than he had that time before, this time with real force, with desperation, with something broken in his voice.

"You brought her back and you didn't tell me," he said, and Xander brought his hands up to cup Spike's elbows, said, "No, we didn't," said it soft because the truth was a big part of him wanted to tell Spike, felt that Spike should know, but it seemed too dangerous. Plus, he knew Spike would really go off the deep end if it didn't work. But that seemed to be happening in any case, and Xander wasn't really clear on why, but it became clearer once Spike started ranting about Buffy coming back wrong and Willow knowing.

But there was also something wild and flashing in Spike's eyes, coming up over the rage, something like hope. And so he said, "Don't tell me you're not happy. Look me in the eyes and tell me when you saw Buffy alive, that wasn't the happiest moment of your entire existence." His voice stayed steady, and he watched Spike's eyes. He already knew it was true, but he knew it more when Spike stepped back, whirled, and stalked away. And yeah, Xander felt something sad, something deep and heavy, far back under his ribs, but he knew it was time to move on. Not that there was anything to be moving on from, just Spike. Though he really was turning out to be not such a bad guy, despite the current theatrics.

Which was maybe why Xander went after him, caught Spike's arm after two steps. Because Xander knew he could just shake his head and walk away, or he could mock Spike for loving Buffy and cut this thing off sharp. Or he could do what he did, which was to release Spike's elbow and bring both his arms tight around them, to press his forehead into Spike's and say, "It's okay. She's okay. She has to be."

And yeah, if they were a little more buddy-buddy than they'd been before, well, that had as much to do with Spike just being a nicer guy these days than anything else, plus the fact that once you've seen someone in a moment of…vulnerability, it tends to make you be more understanding toward them or something. In any case, it was nothing more than that, because Spike's Buffy-mania seemed to take an upswing into the truly intense, and eventually it turned out Buffy was into it after all. Xander felt a little bit of a twinge, seeing them together, but he assessed that, though awkward, the situation wasn't really that hurtful. He and Spike had never had anything more than a physical thing, anyway. He'd certainly never wanted to…date Spike. He wouldn't even know how to begin knowing what to do with that.

He really didn't blame Buffy when she started sleeping with him for real, even though none of them found out about it until it was all over (and that made it easier, too, not to be jealous, or whatever he would have been). He kept his mouth closed instead of asking how could she, because Xander knew perfectly well how she could, and how easily. But by the time Buffy started sleeping with Spike and especially by the time she stopped and they all found out about it, Xander was pretty much past the point of even idly thinking about him.

By that point, Xander had other boys on his mind.


	13. In Which Xander Dates His Coworkers

In Which Xander Attempts to Date Some Construction Workers

There were still times, like when he talked about DEFCON 1 and everybody looked at him all blank, when all Xander could think was that _man_, he really needed some male friends. And quick on the heels of that thought was the one that said _Andrew would have gotten that one_. But it felt almost wrong to be thinking about Andrew these days. No, not wrong. But pointless. Yeah, pretty damn pointless.

But when you worked in construction, there was always some new guy around to think about, some guy with muscles rippling and sweat making a trail down his back, and why had Xander gotten into this line of work again? It really didn't seem healthy at all.

Around the time Buffy's basement flooded, there was one new guy in particular that Xander couldn't stop thinking about. Tito was shorter than Xander, but bigger. Muscley, sort of…bulky. But in a really attractive way! One that Xander couldn't help but look at and think about and not have any idea in hell how to make a move on. Because with Tito, there was never a dark club, there was never a nod and a head jerk toward the dance floor. There were no wandering hands. There was just the sun and sweat and the feel of a hammer in your hands on a construction site.

So when Buffy broke the pipes in her basement (Slayer strength and hand tools did not mix, Xander had definitively decided), Xander thought maybe he'd finally got his chance.

"There's this guy at work I kinda hit it off with. Tito," he told the girls, and tried not to let his smile get too big when he said it. But Buffy raised an eyebrow and Willow nodded knowingly and Dawn giggled anyway. Even in a crisis (especially in a crisis), Xander had never been very good at hiding his emotions.

"Yes!" he said. "Laugh at the funny man with his funny crush! Well, we'll see who's laughing later, when I… when I…"

"Whatever you do, I have a feeling it will still be us," Buffy said. "Laughing. We'll be laughing. We won't be doing anything else."

Xander just shook his head at her and went off to call Tito. To come get a second opinion about the basement, of course.

Then it was just them in the dark and the damp and the spraying water of the basement, and Xander told himself that it was now or never, that he couldn't have been misreading the claps on the shoulder or the way Tito seemed to grin up at him whenever he saw him, and he'd come over to look at his friend's basement, that had to mean something! But when Xander put his hand on Tito's shoulder, leaned over and squeezed slightly, then kept a hesitant smile on his face when Tito looked up at him, Tito shifted away, looked down then up then down again and anywhere but Xander's face.

He said, "We should probably go give your friend an estimate," and Xander felt himself blushing, and promised himself fervently that that was the last time he'd ever make a move without a clear sign.

There was an awkward tension in the kitchen, but still, Tito slapped him on the shoulder as he left, and Xander breathed out a sigh of relief. Tito was a decent guy; Xander should have known he'd be a decent guy about this too.

Still, their almost-friendship faded after that. Not so much because of the unreciprocated hitting on, though it was possible Xander was always unreasonable awkward around Tito after that, but more just because soon Xander had something else that started taking up his attention, in and out of work. And that something was Tony.

Tony the foreman wasn't new. He and Xander had worked together off and on for years at different jobs. And Xander had never really liked him much. Tony was kind of reticent, didn't really talk much, and could be a little mean when he did. He basically only grunted orders and looked at Xander like he was disappointed in him. But that was how he looks at everyone, though.

Or at least, that was what Xander thought until one night, only a couple of weeks after the Tito Incident, he ran into him at the Bronze. Xander was all set to wave hesitantly at him, nod, and then get a table across the room when Tony waved him over.

He was alone, sitting at a hightop table, and he was already drunk. Tony waved him into a seat, and Xander sat on the edge, gazing around desperately for Willow, who was supposed to be meeting him here, and then for Spike or, you know, maybe some guy who'd bullied him in high school. Even that was bound to be more pleasant than this.

But to his surprise, Tony reached out and clutched his hand on the tabletop. Xander tugged lightly away and, when Tony didn't release his hand, took a choking sip from his beer with his other hand and tried to ignore the way his nerves were suddenly racing along his fingertips.

"Harris," Tony said.

"Yeah?" Xander said.

"Harris," Tony said again. "I'm glad to see you, Harris."

After that, Tony let go of his hand and started talking about how much he hated contract work and then about his family, and after that it started to fall into a rhythm Xander knew. Not the take-your-hand-and-lead-you-to-the-dance-floor rhythm, but another that he'd partaken of more times than he should probably be proud of, the touches-under-tables, beer-on-the-breath, let's-take-separate-cars-and-meet-at-my-place rhythm. And Xander followed it because of the way his nerves kept zinging and his heart kept thumping and there was a part of it that went out to Tony, whose mom was sick and who'd shared this strange vulnerability with Xander at a table at the Bronze, because of the way he felt sort of special to have seen this side of Tony that none of the other guys had.

They fell into the same rhythm (except for the Bronze part) almost every night that week, and the next, and the one after that. Xander didn't tell his friends because he knew what they would say; he was sure that they would be really, really supportive at first, then really, really sure that Xander was letting himself get taken advantage of as soon as the met Tony.

Which wasn't what was happening. Xander knew exactly what he was doing, and what this was. He knew that Tony was never going to be out in the open, that he'd never even so much as clap Xander on the back on site or anywhere in public. Knew that there would always be two Tonys, the one that everyone else saw, and the one that Xander glimpsed on nights spent in his apartment with curtains drawn.

And maybe the real reason he didn't tell his friends was because, most of the time, he wasn't quite sure which Tony was the real one.

So Xander was naturally apprehensive the day that Buffy came to work with him, when she was trying to find her calling in between being tortured by malevolent (or maybe just annoying) magical forces.

He introduced Buffy to Tony, trying to communicate something, anything, with his eyes. But though Tony's eyes locked with his for a moment, he didn't seem to get the message, because he was, of course, rude to Buffy, and Xander felt his heart sink and realized that he'd kind of hoped that Tony would surprise him.

"Don't mind him. He may seem pig-ignorant, rude, and a little hostile," Xander told Buffy, then added in a rush, "Oh, and also I'm kind of dating him, okay, have fun!"

Of course Buffy didn't have fun, because of course some demons attacked her, but really, Xander considered, he shouldn't have expected anything else.

Xander could deal with Tony being all the things he was: being harsh, being crass, being pretty much an all-around jerk except in those quiet, secret, hidden moments when they were together, those nights in Xander's apartment when Tony would nuzzle into that place between his neck and his collarbone and Xander could listen to his breathing turn slow. He always left in the middle of the night while Xander was asleep, though, and when Xander saw him the next morning it'd be like nothing had happened at all, until the next night, or the next, or whenever Tony decided to show up.

Xander could deal with that, too, with the distance and the clear not-yet-acceptance of being gay. Xander got that. It had taken him a while too.

But when Tony started talking about how Buffy had gone berserk and attacked him, when he didn't believe that she hadn't gone crazy (and there went any respect or attraction he'd ever had for Vince, too), Xander knew that that was something he couldn't deal with. He knew he'd have to break up with him. That's just what you do, for your friends. Or at least you do whenever there are demons involved. Especially if there are demons involved.

But even knowing that, even then, when Tony came over that night, knocked soft on Xander's apartment door and stood there with his head down and both hands shoved in his back pockets, Xander almost couldn't turn him away. With the hall light catching in Tony's hair, Xander just kept thinking about the slow, delicious sex they had every once in a while, the kind that made Xander feel like things were stretching inside him, things long asleep, and he found he found he couldn't make his mouth say the words, the actual breaking-up words, the ending ones.

But he had to say something, and as they came tumbling out of his mouth, he knew they would be important. "You shouldn't have said that to Buffy today."

Tony looked up at him, eyes still shaded. "Maybe I was a little too hard on her. I'm sorry, Harris."

Xander almost stepped back, then, almost opened his arms and let him in.

"You should tell her that," he said instead.

Tony smiled a little, uncertainly. "You can pass along the message for me."

But now Xander felt that horrible stubbornness blossoming in his stomach, the kind that roots when you know you've got to do the thing even if you don't want to.

"You should tell her yourself. Come down to the Bronze with me, right now. I'll call Buffy and tell her and the rest of my friends to meet us there. I can introduce you." He breathed. In, out. Too loud. " I can tell them what you are to me."

He said it soft, but Tony jerked back like he'd shouted, and shook his head.

"No, man, you know I can't, not yet." Tony reached out a hand, gripped the sleeve of Xander's t-shirt. "Let me in, Harris."

"I can't," Xander said, and he stepped back and closed the door. He almost wished Tony would pound on it again, but Tony would never make that much noise. Instead, he sank to the carpet and rested his back on the door and listened to Tony's footsteps walk away.

xXx

When the demon made them sing, Xander sang a song alone in his apartment about how he was lonely, about how he loved his friends but he was always feeling like there was something he was missing out on, something missing. When they asked him about it later, he just shrugged and told them that he sang about meatloaf. If they questioned this, nobody pressed him.

And then it turned out that even a weird red demon didn't want Xander to be his queen, which didn't make him feel any better. Not that Xander wanted to be a _bride_, necessarily, but he did want someone to want him.

But even so, even though it caused more of a mess than he ever intended, all the singing did somehow make Xander more…hopeful? Like he had a feeling that good things were just around the corner, waiting for him to turn it.


	14. In Which Everything Falls Apart

In Which Everything Falls Apart and Gets Put Back Together Again

After that, things all started to blur together again. The gang tried to make things less hell-on-earth for Buffy, and Spike still occasionally made confusing comments like, "No need to get cute" (but Xander wasn't thinking about that), and hilarity ensued when they all forget who they were and Xander still couldn't touch them and nobody could figure out why. After that bit of fun and games, though, Willow seemed to be getting farther and farther away, and Xander didn't know how to bring her back.

It had started to get bad, and Xander knew it, knew it even before a magicked-out Willow offered to remove the curse for him, to access deep powers, and he just shook his head gently and shooed her toward a chair. Nothing was worth that. And to be honest, Xander didn't even really think about the curse anymore; it had become second nature to skirt around women on crowded streets, to touch the air over someone's arm instead of grabbing their elbow for comfort or in alarm. And it was all right. Xander did all right. The only thing he really missed anymore was Willow's hugs, Buffy's pats on the shoulder, and he hardly even remembered what those felt like anymore. It didn't make them any less close. It didn't make them any less his friends.

But they were all distracted, Buffy maybe most of all, what with taking care of Dawn and having to get a job and Riley showing up that one time (Xander called him "heartbreaker" and then was quick to add, "You know, figuratively speaking," even though, you know, he was pretty sure Riley already knew about that little crush Xander'd had on him). And then there was Spike, lord god king of distraction. Spike calling Buffy on the phone and Buffy acting shifty, talking about seduction, and _man_, Xander should have realized it all much, much sooner.

As it was, he didn't realize it till they were all watching the creepy video cameras that the creepy Trio had put everywhere, and they caught Spike having sex with that vengeance demon, Halfrek, who kept hanging around lately, the one who Spike kept shooting looks at that Xander couldn't interpret, looks like he knew her from somewhere and didn't want to admit where.

When they confronted him about it not being real cool to sleep with demons who'd almost gotten them all killed a few weeks ago, Spike said something about being "good enough for Buffy," and then, while Buffy looked fuming and Xander spluttered, Spike pointed at _him _and smirked, "And the ponce over there too. It's practically a right of membership into the bloody Scooby gang at this point, having sex with me!"

But by that point Buffy was looking stricken and everyone else was looking at her, and Xander didn't think that anybody had heard Spike's last sentence at all. And he had to admit he was relieved. He knew he had to tell Buffy and the others at some point, but now, with Buffy striding off down the street, lips set, _really_ didn't seem like the best time.

It hurt, knowing that she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him about Spike, but then again, it was something he understood all too well, and he wondered when all of them had stopped trusting each other.

And yeah, he felt a little dumb in retrospect about telling Spike that it was never gonna happen with Buffy after it had already…started happening, but…that was life, Xander supposed. Though the fact that he'd gone on to say, "Only a complete loser would hook up with you" (Spike had smirked, said, "Is that so?" and jerked his head in Xander's direction while Buffy looked vaguely confused), that he didn't really have an excuse for. And the way he'd let his eyes linger just slightly when Spike was, ahem, exercising naked in bed that one time was pretty embarrassing to think about now. Still, he figured he was bound to say something dumb at least twice a week, more if it was a month with only thirty days.

Oh, but he should have realized it sooner. Spike had even mentioned being a "sex slave" that time they were wandering around in the graveyard together when Buffy thought she was crazy.

But Xander hadn't thought too much of it because Spike had gone on to say, "You know, in an alternate reality, you might be able to feel the ladies again, wouldn't you?" Then he looked at Xander, sideways and shrewd. "But you probably wouldn't anyway, yeah?"

Xander had shrugged, shook his head, shrugged again. "Probably not. Who knows?" It got to be too much to think about sometimes, not like back in high school when he used to think about it all the time, turning over every single possibility in his head, over and over. There were more important things to think about now.

Things like Andrew.

When Buffy told him about the invisible fight at the arcade, she said, "It was Jonathan! Can you believe that? Jonathan! Like I haven't saved his life twelve times! And Warren! That robot-building bastard! And somebody else. What was his name, Will?"

Willow frowned, "Andrew?"

Buffy nodded. "Andrew, that's right. I don't think we know him."

Xander felt something cold, followed by something very hot, shoot through his chest. "Andrew Wells?"

"Right! That's it! Tucker's brother," Buffy said.

And just like that, Xander was nicely distracted from everything else, Andrew suddenly invading his every waking thought. Because why did it have to be _Andrew_ trying to take over Sunnydale, Andrew trying (sometimes hilariously) to be Buffy's arch-nemesis?

Xander had been sure he'd moved out of town. He hadn't seen him since graduation. If he had seen him, maybe things would have been different. Maybe things would have been… a million different things. But it turned out that Andrew had been living in his parents' basement this whole time, too, keeping a low profile until someone came along to convince him to put his talents to evil use.

When they discussed it again, though, Xander felt it was safest to say, "I've never even heard of this other guy." Buffy gave him a look he couldn't quite read, and Xander hoped she didn't remember anything about Andrew, and Xander and Andrew, and kissing, from that whole mind-reading incident in high school. But she'd had a lot on her mind since then, and she had a lot on her mind now, so surely she wouldn't put it together.

Xander wasn't quite sure why he was so intent on keeping it a secret, except maybe that he was tired of falling for evil people, and he didn't want to add another number to that list.

So he tried not to get excited about nerd stuff (he was sure those Vulcan woman posters were Andrew's, they _had _to be… although then he thought harder about it and decided that the evidence pointed toward them _not_ being Andrew's. Unless Andrew wasn't gay, and Xander had just been some sort of high school experiment—and then Xander had to remind himself that he distinctly _did not care_ what Andrew Wells's sexual preferences were, because, you know, evil) and leaned back on the couch, crossing his legs just to be safe. Even though Xander was an adult with an adult job and an adult apartment now, thinking about Vulcan woman (and, okay, yes, Andrew Wells), he couldn't help but feel like so much of a teenager again.

He figured the truth would come out as soon as they came face to face, but when they finally did, Andrew stood over Xander as he lay on the ground with blood pooling out of his nose, holding a drink with an umbrella and acting like he'd never met Xander before in his life—much less kissed him or run his hand tremblingly over Xander's hair—his mouth partway open in a way Xander hadn't realized he remembered until right now.

Andrew didn't even pause as long as Jonathan did before he turned and followed Warren out the door.

So Xander kept pretending he and Andrew had never had a history, and it was less of a twist in his gut every time, especially after Andrew and Jonathan went to jail and Xander and Buffy had to rescue them and even then Andrew wouldn't look him in the eye.

Still, when Andrew started talking about Darth Rosenberg and midichlorians, Xander felt a tiny thrill he couldn't quash and so to quash it he said, "You've never even had a tiny bit of sex, have you?" and then was somewhat gratified (in a way he was certainly not going to examine too closely, not that they had the time for that sort of thing anyway) when Andrew swallowed and looked down and didn't contest it.

The first time Andrew actually looked at Xander again, after Warren was killed, he looked at him and said, "We have to get out of this town," and for half a second Xander actually thought Andrew was talking to him, that he was included in a _we_ for once, even an evil, fugitive we.

But then Andrew turned to Jonathan and said, "Mexico."

And then he held a sword to Xander's throat, looking almost sorry to do it between all the sad and desperate and crazy he was looking, and if Xander hadn't known it already, he knew then that things were never going to be the same again. Like it or not, they weren't even close to being in high school anymore.

And after everything else fell apart before a yellow crayon managed to put it back together again, Xander thought about Andrew. He was sure (actually sure this time) that he would never see Andrew again after he actually did, as far as they could tell, run off to Mexico with Jonathan (Jonathan? Jonathan? Seriously, Jonathan over him as someone to escape to Mexico with? Andrew couldn't possibly be attracted to that little mole of a guy, could he?). Xander couldn't even believe he was even thinking these thoughts, and he briefly wondered if maybe some sort of demon was possessing him again, because really, stranger things had happened, and that would explain everything.

Because the things he'd felt for Andrew, they hadn't gone away. If anything, they'd gotten stronger, while they were hiding deep inside him and making him think he'd forgotten the way Andrew's upper lip twitched when he was nervous and the way his hands always seemed to be moving and the way he wore too-big t-shirts the flopped over his skinny shoulders. And Xander felt a pull toward him, seeing him again, the kind of pull that hooks you deep far back, further inside yourself than you even knew existed.


	15. Which Deals in Darkness and In-Betweens

Which Deals in Darkness and In-Betweens

It was weird, the high school being back, _building_ the high school that was now back, thinking about all the stuff that used to happen there, good and bad.

"Didn't I learn my lesson?" Xander muttered to himself when they found evil on the premises the _very first day_. "Did I learn absolutely _nothing_ from going to school here for four years? Never work at Sunnydale High. Bad stuff always happens to people who work at Sunnydale High! I tell myself this, but do I listen? No."

"At least then I was dating," he told Buffy and Dawn, and Buffy said, "You could be dating now," and Xander shook his head.

"Yeah, 'cause that's worked out _so well_ in the past, Buff."

She just shrugged and smiled and said, "You never know." Which was so like Buffy, who never had to go looking for love, just had to wait for the next lovestruck dead guy to wander into town. That wasn't fair, Xander knew, to think that. But still, it was kinda true.

Nope, no dates for Xander, only awkwardness when Spike showed up and started hanging around, and then when some girl with a worm monster boyfriend got confused by all the tangled relationship webs and asked, "Is there anyone here who hasn't slept together?" he and Spike shared one of those looks of supreme uncomfortableness that (Xander felt, anyway) reaffirmed their mutual unspoken promise to never talk about this ever again ever.

Whatever. Even if he did have a soul, Spike was insane now anyway. Which was another reason for Xander not to get all braggy about his sexual history. Or, if he wanted to think about it that way, not to get too hopeful for the future.

Honestly, though, if Xander was really making with the honesty, it had been pretty hard to get hopeful for the future lately. I mean, not only in terms of the whole super Big Bad brewing down below, but also in the way where nothing had really been, ahem, brewing down below for Xander in quite a while. Sure, there'd been the weird thing with Spike, and the ill-advised coworker flings, but Xander was closing in on twenty-two and he'd never really even had a real boyfriend.

Unless you counted Andrew.

Which Xander definitely didn't, of course. Making out on prom night was nice and all, but in all fairness it couldn't really be called a relationship.

And besides, Andrew was evil now, and on the run somewhere.

Man, Xander really had to stop going for evil, possibly crazy people. And demons.

He could tell himself and Buffy all he wanted that he was a strong, successful male who was happy to be single, but that didn't make his dating history any less depressing.

xXx

It was hard, those months after Willow got back and they all tried to get started again. Everyone was sad, and everything was dark, and it seemed darker and sadder than it had before, somehow.

Spike moved into Xander's apartment, and that was pretty weird, mostly because sometimes it was awkward and sometimes Xander wanted to kill him and sometimes it was just like they were kinda roommates who hung out sometimes and fought over the remote whenever _Passions_ was on.

But even when things were normal (and weird _because _they were normal), there was a little bit of a distance, and Xander couldn't tell whether that was because of the whole Spike-is-crazy thing or if they were both just being careful not to have any _moments_, because neither of them wanted that. Eegh, just think about how complicated _that _would make things. And Xander really couldn't do complicated right now.

Especially once it turned out that it _wasn't_ just a Spike-is-crazy thing but a Spike-is-crazy-and-also-now-he-can-kill-people-again-and-is-being-manipulated-by-a-dark-force-unless-maybe-he's-just-evil-on-his-own-Xander-wasn't-not-ruling-that-out thing. Yeah, Xander'd done plenty of complicated, by _that _was definitely not something he could do.

And then of course the whole definition of complicated got thrown out the window when Andrew showed up again.

xXx

It had been too much to hope, maybe (this was Xander; of _course_ it had been too much to hope) that Andrew would just disappear into the southern hemisphere and all of Xander's newly reawakened feelings would disappear with him.

Well, he'd already resigned himself to the feelings not disappearing. Now he was having dreams about Andrew again, dreams like he hadn't had in years: Andrew, backlit by the sun, hair glowing and frizzy; Andrew's mouth, alone on a stage, trembling till Xander walked up and kissed it (okay, that had been one of the weirder ones); Andrew doing…other things. Lots of other things.

Anyway. It had been too much to hope that Xander's feelings would go away, but he'd kind of hoped (almost as much as he _hadn't_ hoped) that Andrew would stay gone for good. So mixed feelings was an understatement the day Willow burst into the house dragging Andrew by his collar and said, "Look who I found."

"Oh, this can't be good," Xander said, and he meant Andrew back in Sunnydale, but he also meant the tiny jump in his throat, the stupid gravel-falling feeling in his chest, the excitement that flooded his fingertips, seeing Andrew in that stupid leather coat that actually looked sort of good.

Xander would say damn it all to hell, but he had a pretty good idea that was where they were all headed anyway.


	16. In Which Andrew Is All Tied Up

In Which Andrew Is All Tied Up

"Guess who I found buying mass amounts of blood at the butcher shop." Willow shook Andrew, and he shot her a sulking lot that Xander did not find adorable, not at all.

"What are you doing back in town?" Xander asked, and hoped his voice sounded as firm as he needed it to. Now—now of all times—he didn't need an ill-timed squeak.

"You'll get nothin' out of me, carpenter."

"We'll see about that," Xander said, and gave a little smile even though it was shaky on the inside, and had the sweet, sweet pleasure of watching Andrew gulp and then gape at Xander, and Xander hoped he was wondering about the _implications_ because lord god almighty in heaven above, Xander was already thinking them.

And that was bad. That was _bad_. Because Andrew was the enemy. Or working for the enemy. And enemy bad.

But Xander hadn't gotten laid in months. And now here was Andrew, making little whimpery noises while Xander tied him to a plastic chair, and he couldn't resist pulling the ropes even tighter and this was so bad.

Evil bad. Not sexy bad. Mostly.

"Now, we can do this the hard way, if you want," he said, looking into Andrew's eyes and seeing fear and something else sparking in them. "But believe me when I tell you this will go much easier if you just tell us what you know."

He slammed a chair down and straddled it. For emphasis, and definitely not to hide anything that may have been … popping up due to the sight of Andrew with his hands tied. It _was _hot, you had to admit, and Xander took a moment to ponder how he had never figured out he might be into this kind of stuff before. He'd always been the submissive one, with every girl he'd dated in high school, every guy who knew more than he did, every time, even after years when it felt like Xander still didn't really know what he was doing, didn't know who he was.

Except with Andrew. Back then, it had been like they were equals (only in the closet, though, and Xander guessed usually with equals there was some acknowledgment of being equals where other people could see you). But here, Xander was slamming down chairs, and as he did he felt a zing through his stomach, and Andrew looked so scared and Xander wanted to comfort him and crawl on top of him all at once.

And these thoughts were bad.

Very bad.

He didn't even know what he was saying at this point, talking about how he didn't believe that Andrew didn't know anything, asking him why he had been buying blood. Xander turned away and wanted to laugh when Andrew started going on about the beautiful vampire girl he had fallen in love with. Like anyone would ever believe _that_ story.

Xander didn't believe it, but underneath the laughter he couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy that kind of made him hate himself. Because Andrew had done terrible things, horrible, destructive things, and Xander shouldn't be able to look at him and feel warmth blossom in his chest, shouldn't see any ray of goodness there, in the tremble of his mouth or the flickering motion of his eyes. But Xander did, and he didn't know whether he could believe in it or not, but he was afraid of how much he wanted to.

He stood, shaken. "People are dying," he said. "This isn't a joke," and Andrew looked as though Xander had slapped him, his mouth a perfect O, tears beginning to glisten in his eyes. And Xander left the room before he could do anything he would regret, like wipe those tears away with gentle fingers or maybe jump on top of Andrew and act on his sweet carnal desire.

"How's your guy?" asked Buffy out in the hallway.

"He's primed. I'll be pumping him in no time."

Buffy gave him a look. "Try to resist his sniveling blond face, Xand. We might need him."

Xander made an indignant noise, and Buffy held up a hand. "Look," she said, "We've all kissed evil people, there's no denying that. And it's nothing to be ashamed of, either!" And Xander thought she sounded maybe a bit too defensive there. But then again, Spike. But then again, he was one to talk. "But don't let yourself get seduced into untying him or anything."

At the smile in her voice, Xander jumped. "Why would you think I would do that, um, specifically?"

"Xander." Buffy rubbed her neck. "High school was a long time ago. But the amnesia hasn't set in quite yet."

So Buffy_ had_ known all along, and been either too busy and, let's face it, self-centered or else too insightful to say anything about it during the whole Trio business. With Buffy, it really could have been either.

Buffy's smile had turned strained, like she'd gone on to worry about something else and forgotten it was still on her face. Her forehead crinkled. "I have to get back to Spike. Now get in there and good-cop him. Not in a sexy way," she added.

Xander did his best.

He gave Andrew some water and untied him, then rambled about smallpox and he didn't know what else. He wasn't really listening to himself. He was watching.

Andrew was the same but he was different. He was older, and, if possible, even jumpier. Now he'd seen death.

But he wasn't here to study the new lines on Andrew's face. Xander tried to make Willow out to be the bad cop, talking about all the evil things she'd done (they'd all kissed evil people; they'd all done evil things). He rubbed Andrew's shoulder and told himself it was just part of the act.

Luckily, Spike broke though the wall and started biting Andrew before that particular lie came bursting apart at the seams. Well, it wasn't actually _lucky_, but you know.

Buffy knocked Spike out then stayed to deal with that damage, while Xander led Andrew back into the other room and got some bandages out of the bathroom (handy, sometimes, being in a Slayer's house). When he returned, Andrew was clutching at his neck and looking very white.

"I didn't deserve that, whatever you think I've done," he said, "Besides, like I told your witch friend, like I've been trying to tell you, I'm not bad anymore. I'm good."

"You understand why I have trouble believing that," Xander said, taking Andrew's hand away and starting to dab at the blood.

Andrew's hand came back up and clutched at Xander's arm, and Xander wasn't even pretending not to feel the way Andrew's touch electrified down his arm to a place just below his ribcage on his right side.

"You should believe me, if anybody does," Andrew said. "You're the only one here who knows me." He looked pleadingly up at Xander. "Xander," he said. "Xander, you _know_ me."

"Not anymore," Xander said.


	17. In Which They Run for Their Lives

In Which They Run for Their Lives

When Andrew finally woke up after the whole Bringer attack (and Xander finally stopped looking at his passed-out face in the living room and finding it sweet), he took them down to the school basement (had Xander really just not noticed a big, ancient-y seal when he was laying the foundation? Sunnydale, honestly), he said he wasn't sure where the seal was.

Xander said, "You should get sure. I'm tired of all the run-around with you."

"Run-around with me? What about you?" There was only a slight squawk in Andrew's voice, and he turned around to look at Xander, like he was actually hurt that Xander'd said he didn't know him anymore.

Buffy gave them both a look that meant she didn't know what was going on but she didn't have time for it. Xander was pretty sure Buffy could carry on an entire conversation with looks alone.

She also hurried them away from a conversation about whether killing one's best friend made one a bad person (Andrew had the audacity to look even more hurt than before at Xander's accusation, even though it was, you know, totally true), but it was alarming how easy that accusation was to forget once Andrew started referencing the catacombs in _Wonder Woman_, and Xander felt an ache just below his ribcage. It might just be comic books, but god, he'd _missed_ talking to Andrew. Not that they'd really done much in the way of _talking_, before.

He shoved Andrew in front of him before he could examine that thought too closely.

xXx

"Can we gag him?" Buffy asked, later after Giles and the proto-Slayers had arrived, and Xander had to remind himself not to look too eager when grabbing the duct tape, but then decided that it was okay, that everyone would just think he was eager because Andrew was evil.

Which was not why he was eager, not at all. Xander wanted to feel Andrew's smooth cheek under his hand, Andrew's fluffy hair under his fingers, and it was getting exhausting trying not to admit it to himself.

But Andrew _was_ evil. Xander had to keep remembering that. Still, he reached out and touched Andrew's cheek after patting the duct tape on, an involuntary gesture that he thought probably told too much. Xander, forever and always showing too much.

But with Giles going on about the First being the source of all evil, evil beyond evil, Andrew really was starting to look not nearly so bad in comparison.

xXx

When they untied him a week or so later, Andrew squirmed and said, "Be careful, that's my joystick hand!" and Xander mumbled under his breath, "I'm not even gonna touch that one." Like it was a mantra, one that could very easily transform into _I'm not going to touch Andrew, I am NOT going to touch Andrew_.

He'd come to kind of like Andrew always turning to him first when he had something to say, Andrew keeping with the nerdy references like this was building something between them. With everything being torn down, Xander felt like what he wanted more than anything else was to build something, and maybe anything would do. Not that Andrew had ever been just anything.

When Andrew wasn't talking about _Star Wars_ or the Justice League, he was always muttering about redemption, and beneath the act Xander was starting to suspect there was something true there.

Xander could wonder what (aside from Buffy's looks, which he well knew could convince anyone that she'd have no greater pleasure than to stomp them under her cute little boots) was keeping Andrew from running away, now that he was untied. What was keeping him napping on the couch and wailing about being alone? Why didn't he just leave the house and hole up somewhere? Did he really want to be good, or was he just afraid?

They were all afraid.

xXx

Xander found him alone (he _was _usually alone) in the living room while the potentials were all off practicing with (or in some cases looking suspiciously at) their weapons. Andrew was stroking a bottle of holy water, and Xander wanted to stroke his hair. Or maybe something else. He settled for a hand on his shoulder, just for a second.

"I liked what you said about the alien hordes, back in the kitchen," he told Andrew. "I mean, you weren't helping. But it's nice to have someone around who'd get my references if I made them."

Andrew nodded. "It's nice," he said. Then, "We're all gonna die tonight, aren't we?"

Xander shook his head. "Buffy and Will will bring us through. They always do."

"But if we do all die tonight, I bet I'm gonna be the one to go first," Andrew's voice was the same as when he was talking space weapons, but Xander noticed he wasn't blinking at all, just staring at the corner of the desk against the opposite wall.

Xander sighed. "Just stay behind me," he said. "You'll be all right, I promise."

One hand stopped stroking the holy water bottle and came up to grip Xander's sleeve, to rub the cloth between his fingers. "Thanks."

Xander nodded, suddenly awkward, and sidled away into the kitchen. But it was nice to feel like someone trusted him to protect them, even if he had been the one tying that someone to a chair not so long ago.

And a few minutes later, when they were indeed fleeing for their lives from the ubervamp, Andrew complained about climbing and Xander said, "If you don't pick it up, I'm going to come up there and drop your ass," and he could hear his voice going darker.

Oh yeah, this was bad.

He knew Andrew was just looking for someone to follow, that that was why he was sticking around. Xander remembered the conversation they had had the first night Andrew was in the house, when Buffy was off investigating with Giles, about following Buffy. Whatever else he might be, Andrew knew what it was like to try so hard to convince yourself you weren't a follower when at heart you knew you really were.

Because wasn't that what Xander had been doing too? Wasn't that what they were all doing, all the time? Wasn't life (at least, life on the Hellmouth) kinda just all about deciding what side you were on?

But no, Xander knew, looking at Andrew looking up at him in the aftermath of the ubervamp's dusting, his mouth twisted down at one corner like it did when he was thinking hard, hands twisting together like they didn't know what else to do, that life was about a lot more than just that.


	18. In Which Bonds Are Forged

In Which Bonds Are Forged

After that, tensions were high all over, and all the potentials finding out Xander couldn't touch them led to all sorts of amusing/aggravating antics, like them running at him full-speed and trying to bounce back onto couch cushions, and that whole sneaking-in-on-him-in-the-shower incident. Mostly amusing for the potentials, mostly aggravating for Xander.

And then Andrew was there too, hanging around in corners, kind of looking like he'd also like to run full-speed at Xander, though whether to grab him or punch him or knock him off his feet, Xander was never entirely sure.

The First was regrouping, and so were they, and it turned out that regrouping meant a lot of downtime for Xander while Buffy and the potentials trained, and Willow and Dawn did research, and he waited around for the front window to need to be fixed again.

Andrew had even more downtime than Xander, and he seemed to spend it wandering around the house alternately hanging around Buffy and trying to get her to let him fight and padding up to Xander and sighing dramatically until Xander asked him what was wrong.

Usually, it was a complaint that Rona took the last pop tart, or that he wished he could wrinkle his nose as Brittish-ly as Molly, but one day, when Xander long-sufferingly turned to him and asked, Andrew said, "What if one day Buffy does let me fight, and it turns out I'm not brave enough?"

"You really are just a teen girl at heart, aren't you?" Xander asked, trying to keep it light, but Andrew either didn't get his reference to the potentials' current insecurity in their fighting ability or he didn't care.

Andrew shifted his shoulders, crossed his arms, leaned so far back into the couch Xander thought he might be trying to be absorbed by it. "I ran away, you know."

"Yes, we all know," Xander said. "To sunny, sunny Mexico like a big, evil coward." This came out sounding more fond than accusatory, Xander was resigned to notice.

"Well, yeah, but that's not what I meant," Andrew said, unshifting and leaning toward Xander now. "I meant at graduation."

"Our … high school graduation?"

"Yeah. You know, with the big snake and the blowing up and everything. I ran away."

Xander shrugged. "Sure. Most people did."

"Nuh-uh," Andrew insisted. "You and your gang mobilized the students. You created an army! You inspired people to become fighters who had never fought before!"

Xander sighed now. "Yeah, and let me tell you, that gig never gets old."

"I was going to join you guys," Andrew said. "I had a sword hidden under my robes, strapped to my hip just like Xena." His voice got wistful. "Wish I'd had a chakram." He seemed to shake himself. "I was ready, but then at the last minute, I ran. I always think I can be brave, but then I figure out I can't. That's why it's so easy, when people are telling you what to do. You don't have to figure out how to be brave for yourself."

"A stunning moral dilemma, to be sure," Xander said drily, but he did sort of understand what Andrew was saying. Not the part about wanting to be told to do evil, but the wanting to be brave but being afraid you really aren't. Yeah, Xander got that.

"I was going to fight with you guys, and then I was going to find you afterwards and show you the blood of my slain foes and you would know that I—" Andrew stopped suddenly.

"Know that you what?"

"Nothing."

"Leaving aside the part about slain foes, seriously, what?" Xander could feel his pulse beating rapidly as he clutched his hands together, to stop them from shaking maybe, stop them from flying out.

Andrew looked down, looked abashed. "Know that I belonged with you."

Xander didn't know what to say, could hardly think around the beating of his heart so loud in his ears.

Andrew was looking away now, out the crack in the boarded-up front window. "I was so hung up on you," he said, sounding faraway, a little wistful again.

"Yeah?" Xander said, and his voice came out harsher than he meant it, so much air and heartbeat behind his words.

Andrew jerked back from the window, looked at Xander again then looked away. His eyes were wide as he said, "But I'm totally over that now. Yeah," and Xander jerked his head back too, surprised yet not really surprised at all by the thud and twist he felt in his stomach. He'd been spending so much time trying to decide whether Andrew was _good_ enough to be liked that he hadn't even really stopped to consider that Andrew might not think Xander was good enough for _him_, might not even be interested at all. Now it was all he could think about.

"Right," Xander said. "Right, yeah, me too. Long time ago, water, bridges, you know."

"Yeah."

Xander felt the words pulling at him, and he knew if he didn't say something else soon he'd take it back, declare his still-clearly-present feelings for Andrew right there. "Where did you go?" he asked instead. "After graduation, I mean."

"Oh," Andrew said, and seemed to shake himself, some tension leaving him, his shoulders drooping. "I went to college in Wisconsin."

Somehow this was not what Xander had been expecting to hear at all.

Andrew lifted one shoulder. "But it was cold there, and people always looked at me funny whenever I talked about setting flying monkeys on people or giant snakes showing up at graduation. So after a couple years, I came back. And then, you know…" He trailed off, looking uncomfortable again.

Yeah, Xander knew what happened next.

xXx

Later that night, Xander talked to Dawn about watching everyone get powerful while he stood by, about being so goddamned human, and cursed to boot. About never, ever being chosen. Dawn said things about how Xander's power was knowing and seeing, and Xander would've liked to think he saw things, but he didn't feel like he really knew anything at all.

After he walked away from Dawn, he noticed Andrew lurking around the corner below the stairs. Xander smiled tightly at him, reached out a hand to pat his shoulder then let it drop. He was tired.

"I heard what you were saying," Andrew said.

"You shouldn't have been listening."

"But I was."

"But you were."

"And you're wrong," Andrew said.

"Oh yeah? Wrong about what?"

"You said nobody's watching you." Andrew shrugged one shoulder up, crossed his black-sweatered arms. "But that's not true. I'm watching you." His voice went higher, the same way it did when he was begging Buffy to take him on patrol. The voice that meant he really wanted something.

Xander got a thrill, a shoot through the stomach at the thought that the something Andrew wanted might be him. Maybe it was crazy, and destructive, but for just a minute Xander thought maybe he might be good enough—might be chosen—after all.


	19. In Which, You Know, Warren

In Which, You Know, Warren

But it was always more complicated than that. When he saw Willow-as-Warren, Andrew dropped a plate and started saying things about knowing what Warren was now, his promises wouldn't work on him anymore. Xander guessed he wasn't the only one with some mantras.

But then as soon as Andrew thought it was actually Warren, he went straight to him and hugged him tight, and Xander felt things crinkle and crumple and roll sickeningly inside of him. He knew the look on Andrew's face, looking at who he thought was Warren. It couldn't be anything but love.

When he figured out it wasn't actually Warren a few seconds later, though, Andrew went from looking love- and joystruck to looking wary and disturbed and maybe like he was about to start crying.

After Willow-Warren walked out the door and Kennedy walked right out after her, and after Buffy and Spike went off to deal with Spike's head (and maybe even their sexual tension, though perhaps that was too much to ask), Andrew flopped down in his usual spot on the couch, turning his head into the cushions.

Dawn took one look at him, then looked at Xander and started oh-so-casually backing away. "You know, I've got a _bunch_ of homework to do. Can't let the coming evil get in the way of good grades!"

"Dawnie…" he started to say, but she was already gone.

Xander walked over and sat down gingerly on the couch. Maybe Andrew just wanted to be alone.

But as soon as the cushions depressed, Andrew rolled over onto his back and looked at Xander beneath his eyelashes.

"You wanna talk about it?" Xander asked, trying not to sound condescending. I mean, the last thing he actually wanted to talk about was Warren, and Andrew's feelings for Warren. But he also knew that seeing Warren had probably been harder on Andrew than anyone, except Willow herself.

"No," Andrew said, rubbing his face into the back of the couch again. Then, "Yes."

"Okay," Xander said, not quite sure where to go from there.

Luckily, getting Andrew to start talking was never really a problem.

"It's just hard," Andrew said. "I wanted it to be him, but I didn't."

Xander nodded, bit his lip but couldn't help saying, "It looked like you wanted it to be."

Andrew shot him a look he couldn't read. "I know he's evil. That even when he's not the First, he's evil. He was evil."

Xander nodded again. "He sure was."

"But it was complicated, with us. There was a history."

Xander forced a laugh. "You're making it sound like you dated the guy." Then he stopped laughing as he realized that, god, maybe that _had_ been what was going on. They didn't know what had happened in that basement in between all the plotting to bring down Buffy and the creepy ex-girlfriend rape. Xander shuddered. He hoped for Andrew's sake as well as his own that that hadn't been what was going on.

Andrew looked like he was thinking just about the same thing, his face pinched. He sat up.

"No," he said. "No, it was never like that." Now it was Andrew forcing the laugh. "He would never waste his time on me."

"How did you even start hanging out with that guy, anyway?" Xander asked.

"Well, we were kind of friends in high school." His eyes got that faraway look again. "Admirers of each other's work, as it were." He snapped back. "Then when we realized we were all back in town, we started hanging out, and then, once we decided to team up and take over Sunnydale, it just, you know, kinda happened."

"What kinda happened?" Xander asked, suddenly afraid he had lost track of the conversation in a big way.

But Andrew gave a sort of rueful smirk.

"Not _it_," he said. "No, I thought about it, of course, but the moment was never right." His voice became dreamy and faraway again, and Xander wondered if there would ever be a time that Andrew could be anchored to the present, or to another person. "I remember the first time we held hands. We were doing a spell with Jonathan, and I didn't want to hold his hand because I was sure he'd know. I'd hold too tight, be all sweaty."

Xander coughed. He was distinctly uncomfortable now, for reasons that didn't just have to do with it being extremely distasteful to think about Warren doing anything sexual at all.

Andrew brightened. "But sometimes I put my hand on his waist when we were in evil, conspiratorial huddles and he didn't always pull away!" He seemed to think about what he'd just said, and deflated again.

Xander shook his head. "I can't believe you guys were ever an actual threat. It just defies reason."

Andrew nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean. It was all Warren, though. If it was just me and Jonathan, we'd never have gotten anywhere."

"You loved him," Xander finally said, the thing that had been on his mind all night.

Andrew looked surprised, then contemplative. "No," he said. "I mean, there was that one night in Mexico, when we were so scared of being eaten starting with our bottoms, and then we started giggling about _that_ and then Jonathan dared me…"

"What?" Xander yelped. "You did it with Jonathan?"

"Yeah," Andrew said, now looking off and away, abashed again. "Just to see. But I didn't love him. Not like that, anyway. Though," he continued, perking up again (he was a mass of contradictions, this boy). "Do you remember when Jonathan was _Jonathan_." He put his hands out, as if to display a name in lights, and Xander knew what he meant.

Xander remembered Jonathan, movie star and hero of Sunnydale. And oh, Xander remembered fantasizing about Jonathan every night, waiting for Scooby meetings and the chance of Jonathan's hand brushing his back, patting his shoulder. The way Jonathan could make him feel valued and respected and kinda tingly. Everyone seemed to have mostly forgotten about that whole episode, but when Andrew brought it up, Xander realized that he hadn't.

And then Xander blushed, Andrew's words catching up to him, as he thought about what must have gone down in Mexico, about, ahem, being eaten starting from your bottom, and about what other things might have been dared. He realized he was no longer thinking about Jonathan or Warren at all, and shook himself.

"And even when he wasn't a movie star, Jonathan was a good guy," Andrew went on. "A really good guy." He swallowed hard.

Xander put a hand against his back. "I know he was."

Andrew straightened, as if filled with some measure of new strength. "I know you weren't talking about Jonathan, though," he said.

Xander stayed quiet. Now that the moment had come, he wasn't actually sure he really wanted to hear this. But he had a feeling that Andrew needed to tell him, or at least, needed to tell somebody.

"Of course I loved him," Andrew said, head in his hands. "I was in love with him. For a while, I couldn't see anything else, anything but him." He looked up through his fingers, locked eyes with Xander. "But I don't think I am anymore. I mean, I know I'm not anymore. But there's still lots of…lots of stuff. I don't think it's going to go away right away."

"It never totally does," Xander said.

"It wasn't just Warren," Andrew said. "I liked being part of a group, you know? I liked taking orders, even. I liked someone else giving me the answers, because it's hard to find the answers on your own. It's like in _Spider-Man_, Issue 17, when Peter Parker—"

Xander put a hand on his knee, and Andrew broke off midsentence. Xander immediately took his hand off Andrew's knee and shook it awkwardly in the air.

"Well, that's life," Xander said. Where the hell did he normally put his hand when he was talking to people? "Sometimes you don't know the answers. But you do it anyway."

"Yeah," Andrew said. "Yeah, I know."

"I know that doesn't really make it any better," Xander said. "I know it's hard."

"I know," Andrew said. "Thanks anyway."

Then, with incredible swiftness, he reached over and threw his arms around Xander, pinning Xander's arms to his sides, squeezing hard. When Andrew released him a little, Xander turned so they were facing each other on the couch, and tentatively reached his arms up too.

He could feel Andrew's ribs under his fingers, Andrew's chin on his shoulder, and Xander felt himself relax for the first time in he didn't know how long.

They kept hugging, way too long for a normal hug, but Xander guessed, under the stress and the evil circumstances, it still might not mean anything. I mean, he'd heard Andrew, literally just now, talking about how he wasn't sure he was over Warren. Xander couldn't let himself start concocting fantasies. That wouldn't help anybody.


	20. In Which Xander Touches a Woman (Sorta)

In Which Xander Touches a Woman (Sorta)

The next day, after Spike was better (albeit chipless) and they had determined that Giles was definitely _not_ the First, Xander saw a girl at work, a beautiful girl. It was shocking. Not that she was beautiful, or that he noticed she was beautiful (the world was so full of beautiful people; Xander felt like he was always looking at all of them). No, what was shocking was that when he walked over and asked if he could help her, and she held out her hand for him to shake, instead of being propelled backward by her proximity, he felt himself rather drawn toward her, and his hand reached out as if of its own accord and took hers.

He touched her.

He _touched_ her.

Xander felt like his fingertips were bubbling, like his chest was oozing hot wax. He felt hot and cold, light and heavy all at once. He'd forgotten what the touch of a girl's hand felt like (not very different from the touch of a boy's hand, really), and more important than that, _what the hell was going on?_

Was the curse fading? Was the curse lifted?

Before he quite knew what he was doing, Xander was bumbling on about sexy, funky fun and asking this strange girl, Lissa, to go to coffee with him later.

To test it, he told himself. To see if something really was changing, curse-wise. He did a pretty good job of pushing back the voice that whispered the other reason: _If Andrew really isn't interested, you might as well not be alone forever. _

xXx

He burst into Buffy's living room with a "Somebody come touch me!" and Andrew poked his nose out the kitchen door, then ducked back in when Xander said, "Ladies only," and then worried that he was being mean. What if Andrew did like him after all? In that case, he was probably just making it worse. But hey, this was Xander: he was bound to make everything worse no matter what, right?

Buffy and Willow gave him identical looks of resigned bemusement. "Is bouncing away from you at high speed fun again?" Buffy asked. "Is this what living with the potentials has done to you?"

"No," Xander said. "No. I have a date tonight. With a girl."

"What? Why?" Willow asked.

"Because she shook my hand," Xander said. "And it worked. Now get over here and try to hug me."

Willow kept looking at him sort of suspiciously, but she put down the socks she was holding and walked toward him. But as soon as she got within range, she bounced off and landed on the couch. Same with Buffy.

"You know," Buffy said. "I'd forgotten. That _is_ sort of fun."

"Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it. Because I'm more worried about what the hell is going on."

"She really could touch you? You didn't just imagine it?"

Xander gave her a Buffy-worthy look. "No, I did not just imagine it."

Buffy shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe it's wearing off."

"We can look into it, I guess," Willow said. "After we're done investigating Principal Wood. Buffy's going out with him tonight."

But before Xander could do much more than offer a surprised splutter at that news, he broke off at the sound of Andrew's raised voice from the kitchen, and pressed his ear to the door in time to hear him say, "All those girls, all that blood." He felt a wrench, a crashing. So Andrew probably _was _evil after all. It shouldn't have come as a shock; it was what he'd been afraid of this whole time. But it did.

"What's up, Xander?" Buffy asked.

"Nothing," Xander said. "Just Andrew having some trouble with the microwave. I think I'll go help him out."

"Yeah, you're _so_ eager to touch women again," Willow said, crossing her arms. "It's obvious."

Xander shot her a look, then eased open the kitchen door.

Andrew dropped the instruction manual, then told him he had a plan to trick the First. As plans went, it wasn't even that bad.

xXx

Xander found himself flustered and nervous, waiting for Lissa at the Espresso Pump, then even more flustered and nervous and incapable of speech once she arrived. She tasted his hot cocoa and then stroked her fingers up his wrist like she did this all the time, like this wasn't a revelation and something of a miracle. There didn't seem to be any way to deny it: Maybe he really was on his way to being cured. But Xander realized, when he had this thought and immediately felt his stomach sink, instead of performing the acrobatics that it should have been doing at this news—or even the possibility of this news—that maybe he didn't want to be.

But that particular moral quandary didn't end up being a problem. Because of course it turned out Lissa was a demon who wanted to kill him. So that explained why she'd been able to touch him; demons had always done sexes and genders a little differently. Sometimes very differently.

But still, somehow the thought that the (human) female population was still unavailable to him wasn't quite the disappointment Xander'd thought it would be.

Though it was hard to focus on what precisely his feelings were when he was strung up on a wheel like that. Loss of blood can certainly be distracting. As his panic grew and his thoughts drifted, Xander found he could really only think about one thing: Andrew.

Xander would have liked to imagine that, if he were ever in a situation where his life flashed before his eyes (which, let's be honest, was pretty easy to imagine, because it happened pretty much every other week) and he thought of the person he maybe-loved (or in any case could not stop thinking about—was that what made love? Maybe that was at least what started it), he would think grand romantic thoughts about being swept into someone's arms and kissing on a bridge over a rippling stream in the sunset or something.

But Xander's thoughts were pretty much just along the lines of: _I don't even care if he's evil, I just want to make out with his whole stupid face._

xXx

After Buffy and Spike and the hot principal rescued him and took him home, Willow asked, "What happened?"

"What do you think happened?" he asked. "A demon woman was attracted to me. I'm going gay. I've decided I'm turning gay." He glanced at Andrew out of the corner of his eye, hoping he understood this to be the apology it was. If an apology was necessary, anyway.

Willow looked at him like he was crazy, and Buffy giggled and suggested that he would just start attracting male demons (been there, done that, Xander thought), and Andrew sighed longingly when Xander started talking about mentally undressing Scott Bakula.

But later, Willow came and sat next to him and nudged the couch cushion by his elbow. "So I guess you're giving up women for good this time, huh?"

Xander looked toward the kitchen, through the closed door of which he could faintly hear the strains of Andrew reciting the pilot episode of _Quantum Leap_ word-for-word to a batch of no doubt bored potentials.

He smiled. "I think I might be. Try to contain your disappointment."

Willow smirked, looking toward the kitchen door pretty speculatively herself. "I think somehow I'll manage."

Xander laughed. "I do miss hugging you, though, Will."

Willow's smirk turned into a sad smile. "Me too, Xander. But I love you, you know that, right?"

" 'Course," Xander said. "I love you too."

Willow smiled broader, then got up and wound her way ever-so-not-stealthily-at-all toward the kitchen.

A few minutes after she went in, Andrew came out.

He lingered halfway across the living room, running his hands over the open top of Buffy's weapons trunk.

"They wanted to talk strategy instead of time travel," he said. "Willow sent me out here to ask you to come in."

"Okay," Xander said, standing up.

"Will Buffy ever let me in?" Andrew asked abruptly.

"In what?"

"Into the gang." Andrew twisted his fingers absentmindedly in a frayed crossbow string.

Xander shrugged. "You're already in the gang as far as I'm concerned."

Andrew smiled, brighter than Xander had ever seen.


	21. In Which Andrew Tells a Story

In Which Andrew Tells a Story

By the time Andrew started wearing oven mitts and referring to himself as a "guestage," it took physical effort for Xander to restrain himself from ripping said oven mitts and every other stitch of clothing off him.

It felt wrong, to be feeling this giddy, nervous anticipation, this wanting, in the midst of so much fear and tragedy. But at the same time, it kind of felt like this was the only time they were going to get, so they might as well make the most of it. It's what they were all doing: Willow and Kennedy, probably Buffy and Spike (Xander had seen them curled up on the couch, had seen the looks passing between them, and he found that, despite all the complications where _that _was concerned—complications both involving him and not—he felt a warmth blossoming in his chest when he thought of those two together, like that was the way it was supposed to be).

Andrew started carting a video camera around everywhere, commentating the events of the Summers residence as they happened, which Xander found to be the perfect opportunity to stare at Andrew for large spans of time without him noticing.

The potentials were definitely starting to notice, though, if there increased giggles and elbow-nudging was any indication.

Perhaps he was more slack-jawed than he thought. Perhaps he should work on that.

But at least Buffy was letting Andrew tag along on patrols now. That was nice, and not just because it gave Xander more time to gaze at the back of his neck and his hunched shoulders inside his jacket while he tried to think of witty things to say.

He could feel a pleased smile curling up his mouth when Andrew focused the camera on him one morning, saying he was going to film Xander's special intro later.

"The man who is the heart of the slayer machine," he said, sweeping his arm across the kitchen island, causing Kennedy's look of annoyance to tick upward two notches. But that was bound to happen within the next ten minutes anyway.

"Yeah? The heart," Xander said, and looked down, feeling his smile grow wider.

"Oh god, get a room already," Rona mumbled, not very under her breath at all. "There should be a quota on flirting in the kitchen, and we've already passed it."

Xander looked up in time to see Andrew's neck reddening as he swung the camera the other way, but he still couldn't stop himself from raising his eyebrows semi-suggestively as Andrew blundered by him, and he was gratified to hear Andrew's voice stumble, seeming to lose his train of thought.

Though Andrew clearly had some sort of a crush on Spike. So there was that.

But later that day, Xander was skulking around the corner when he heard Andrew telling his "gentle viewers" about the fine work Xander had done replacing the window sash (it was fine work, Xander had to admit. He did a fine window sash). And then Andrew said, "He's extraordinary." Like he was marveling at the fact.

Xander had to slide down the wall, his feet no longer able to support his weight, as warmth flooded his stomach and streamed up to fill his chest.

xXx

During his interview that afternoon, Xander was nervous, the warmth in his chest turned to butterflies and electric volts, his palms sweaty no matter how many times he wiped them on his jeans.

He complimented Andrew on his choice of title for his documentary, even though he couldn't really concentrate on any words right now (though he did vaguely hear Andrew say that was sweet of him, and he felt himself blushing. Well, let's be honest, blushing more).

Andrew set up his camera on the table, then leaned back, poised over his notebook. "So, we used to date, sorta," he began while Xander spluttered. "How are you feeling about that these days?"

"That's how you're starting this interview?" Xander managed to gasp out.

Andrew sounded so nervous, so hesitant, yet there was something in his voice that Xander didn't think had been there before he'd started lugging the camera around. Strength, he guessed. Or maybe just journalistic integrity.

"Yes, I think it's important for our viewers to know."

Xander smiled, relaxing slightly. "So it's all for the viewers, huh?"

Andrew's cheeks reddened. "Yes," he said.

Xander leaned back against the couch cushions, crossed his legs. "Yeah, we used to date," he said, with a nonchalance he didn't know he had in him, even if it was a false nonchalance. "Sorta."

Andrew looked terribly embarrassed now, but determined. "And how do you feel about that these days?" he repeated.

Xander leaned forward, his heart beating fast. The time for nonchalance seemed to be over. It really was now or never, for everyone and everything.

"I feel like maybe it was the best thing that ever happened to me."

Andrew smiled tremblingly, his hands sliding off his notebook, his pen falling to the floor. Then he looked away. "You don't mean that," he said.

Xander found himself moving off the couch, crossing the living room, kneeling in front of Andrew's chair, between his knees. "I mean it," he said, hands coming up to grip Andrew's arms.

Xander then realized what he was doing, and leaned back, awkwardly patting Andrew's shoulder. "And, um, how do _you_ feel about…all that?"

Andrew looked down, clasped his hands. "I think about you every day," he said quietly. "But I know I could never deserve someone like you."

Xander was flabbergasted. His whole life, he'd felt like the undeserving one: the tagalong, the lesser, the weak one among such powerful friends. Everyone, Xander had been sure, who had ever liked him had done so despite themselves. But here, Andrew…

"That's not true," he said, and then he was leaning forward again, leaning up, brushing Andrew's hair tenderly off his forehead (he felt tender and fierce, suddenly, like he wanted to stroke Andrew softly and throw him down on the floor all in the same motion) and pressing his mouth to Andrew's.

Andrew's mouth was wet and warm and soft and surprised, opening under Xander's, gasping and breathy (though maybe that was Xander himself). He grasped Andrew's arm again, Andrew's hands coming up to cup his elbows, holding so gently, then moved one hand to the back of Andrew's neck, holding firm.

He kept hold when they pulled away; he pressed their foreheads together, their mingled, choked breath filling the whole room. "That's not true," Xander said again. "You deserve."

xXx

Later, Andrew tilted his head at Xander and Xander followed him into the living room, watched Buffy and Willow make him look into a crystal and tell the whole story about the First appearing to him while he and Jonathan were hiding out in Mexico. Xander swallowed hard, at the thought of Andrew with either of the other boys or at the look of barely concealed pain on Andrew's face, he didn't know which. Probably both.

And when Buffy and Willow marched back into the living room post-research with determination etched in every line of their faces (when had they all started getting lines on their faces, anyway? They were growing up, and that was almost as scary as the nameless evil hanging out below the school. Okay, not really. But kinda), and Buffy called for Principal Wood and Spike to come with them to the school, Xander stood up along with them.

Buffy turned to him. "I'm not sure you're gonna want to see this, Xander."

"Yeah, I think I'm gonna," he said, and he reached over, there in front of everybody, and took Andrew's hand. He could feel his heart beating fast, see the raised eyebrows (but none raised too high, he was resigned but slightly relieved to see. Probably, as usual, everyone else had seen it before he had).

Andrew turned and smiled at him crooked, and Willow looked like her heart was breaking. Spike looked somewhere between disgusted and amused. Xander held on tighter.

He had to let go when they got to the school and there were rioting students everywhere, and then Buffy made him stay at the top of the basement stairs with Spike and Principal Wood, who were glowering at each other like they wanted to either kill or make out with each other. In this group, Xander figured, odds were pretty good either way.

He didn't know what happened down there till Andrew told him the whole story later, broken and sobbing in his arms. He only saw Andrew emerge, face tearstained, walking somber but steady.

xXx

They went to Xander's apartment, which hadn't seen light in weeks, Xander'd lost count of how many. Once inside the doorway, Andrew turned to him. He hunched his shoulders, then straightened them.

"Here's the thing," he said. "I killed my best friend."

Xander led him to a chair, held his hand while Andrew explained about how he never _really _thought that Warren was real, not really, but that seemed like an easier way, a way where he could still pretend he was making everything right even though he knew he really, really wasn't.

By the end of it, Andrew was pressed up against Xander's chest, hands clutching, and they were both crying.

"I don't want to be bad. I don't want to be bad anymore. I want to be good." He kept saying it over and over, between Xander's kisses and Xander's hands and Xander's breath. Like he was trying to convince himself.

"I know," Xander kept saying, knowing this was the most useless thing in the world to say but saying it anyway, saying it until the words didn't seem to have meaning anymore, if they ever had. "I know, I know, I know."

Eventually, Andrew sat up, wiped his face. "I really did come back here because I wanted to make it right," he said. "But I'm still so afraid."

Xander took a breath. "I'm afraid too."

"What are you afraid of?"

Xander took an even deeper breath. "Well, the coming apocalypse, obviously. But also…what if I'm never good enough?"

"What if I'm never good at all?" Andrew asked.

"You are good," Xander said, cupping Andrew's face, suddenly certain that he had never been more sure of anything in his life. "You're so good, Andrew."

Andrew took a shuddering breath. "I think you're extraordinary," he said.

Xander grinned, leaned in to kiss Andrew again. "I know. I heard you the first time."


	22. Epilogue: In Which, Whatever, Catharsis

Epilogue: In Which, Whatever, Catharsis or Something

They just _fit _together, the way Xander was always catching Andrew's eye during kitchen pile-ups and Andrew was turning to him whenever one of the girls got a comic book or action movie detail wrong.

When the evil preacher, Caleb, poked out his eye and Xander felt the most agonizing pain he'd ever felt (well, probably, it wasn't like he could be expected to remember _all _the agonizing pain he'd ever been through), Spike was the one who rescued him, but Andrew was the one who sat by his side in the hospital (when Willow was tired enough to let him, anyway), holding his hand and ever so lightly, tenderly touching the skin under his eye.

Sunnydale became a ghost town, and everybody started fighting each other like it was the only thing they knew how to do anymore.

After Andrew spoke with the voice of the Bringer, Xander had to hold him half the night before he stopped shaking. The other half of the night, they did what everybody else was doing: had sex the night before the night before the end of the world.

They'd been doing lots of making out, but one of them always shied away, scared or guilty or not ready or everything. But that night, Xander thought they felt just the right amount of safe with each other and an equal amount of danger pressing in from all sides so as to make it pretty much inevitable.

It was awkward and fumbling and hands-shaking at first, but then Xander flipped Andrew over onto his back and Andrew's hands came up to grip Xander's biceps, to run his fingers along the lines of muscle there, and their breath hitched, not quite in unison, and Xander could see Andrew's eyes full of wonder, and knew his own eyes must look similar (he could tell he'd been lighting up whenever Andrew walked into the room lately, and this was a whole new kind of light).

It was still a little awkward and fumbling after that, but in a tense, heat-filled way that Xander wanted to bask in for the whole rest of his life.

Unfortunately, there were other things that required his attention.

xXx

The night before the end of the world, Xander invited Spike to play D&D with them and Spike snorted and said, "Not bloody likely," but then paused and clasped Xander's shoulder in the hall. "Keep yourself safe tomorrow, Harris. And keep that little blond mouse you've been shagging safe too. He's actually not too bad." And then he added, "But I'll kill you if you tell him I said that."

Xander nodded, laughed. Spike turned to go, but Xander pulled him back into a hug. Spike didn't even resist all that much before hugging him back. It felt kind of weird, but good.

It was far from the weirdest thing that happened that night, though.

In the early hours of the morning, there was a knock on the door, and when Xander cautiously opened it, it was Anya.

"Well," he said, stepping back. "You're about the last person I expected to see." Then he paused. "Are you a person? Or a demon?"

Anya shook her head disparagingly and gave him a pursed-lipped look, though he fancied her glance turned a bit admiring as it landed on his eye patch. It certainly seemed like she hadn't changed much. "Demon," she said. "After I left here, I ended up in Cleveland, and I met this guy and we fell in love and had many pleasure moments together, and then he left me at the altar and I got my powers back and became a vengeance demon again." She paused and looked consideringly at Xander. "Probably it's a good thing I left," she said. "If I'd stayed maybe we'd have gotten together, and probably the same thing would have happened."

Xander kind of wanted to protest this, because although Anya had always been very pretty and was clearly very sharp, he really didn't see that happening. But who knew? How did you ever know?

"So, not that it's not nice to catch up with evil demons who have cursed you," Xander said. "But what are you doing here, Anya?" He noticed that while Anya had been talking, Andrew had wandered up behind him, and was now tugging ever-so-gently on his shirtsleeve and looking fascinated at the sight of Anya.

"Well," she said, "obviously I am here to assist in your apocalypse and redeem myself for my prior life of evil."

"So you're not here to win my heart?" Xander said. "I thought maybe, what with the showing up on the doorstep and all."

"Ew, no. I'm way over you. And it looks like that guy is all _over _you."

"I know all about that redeeming stuff," Andrew said, sliding an arm around Xander's waist. She had a point, Xander had to admit, with the all-over-you thing. "I recently completed a quest for redemption myself." And then, "Are you really a vengeance demon? I've never met one before. What's the best curse you ever put on somebody?"

Anya's eyes lit up and she focused on Andrew, practically pushing Xander aside. "Well, there was this one time, in Russia…"

Xander was proud of himself for waiting two whole minutes before bursting in, "Can we maybe talk about a different curse you put on someone?"

Anya looked up at him. "That's very rude, I was just in the middle of my story. But yes, we can talk about another. I've cursed a lot of people."

"Including, you know, _me_?" Xander was only vaguely alarmed to hear how high-pitched his voice had become. Under the circumstances, he thought it was rather justified.

"Yes, including you. But you know, I really don't think that was one of my best. No offense, Xander."

"Okay, fair enough. But I was thinking we could talk about it maybe more along the lines of you, you know, taking it off me?" Really, Xander thought he was doing very well; he wasn't even threatening her with physical violence (not that he could have carried said violence out…yet. Though, actually, since she was a demon again—Xander pulled his mind sharply back to the matter at hand).

"Yes," Anya said impatiently. "I was getting to that. I thought that could be part of my redemptive arc, but if you want to hurry the process along and ruin all the proper drama of it…"

"Yes," Xander said. "That is exactly what I want."

By this point, the other D&D players had trickled out into the hallway, and now Willow stuck her head down over the banister. "What's going on?" she said groggily. "What are you guys doing up?"

"Anya's going to remove Xander's curse," Andrew told her, and Xander noticed that his voice was very small, the excitement of vengeance-demon stories gone out of it completely.

Willow flew down the stairs, and she grabbed Anya by the shoulders. "Anya! You're here? More importantly, you are?"

"I am. If you'll remove your witchy little hands, I might actually have room to work here."

Willow looked like she wanted to make some comeback, then closed her mouth and stepped back. Xander realized that he was practically panting, that his nerves were abuzz with excitement. After all these years, all this time, to have Anya here in the house, to have a chance of leading a normal life at last.

Not that it had been all bad, obviously. He looked at Andrew, whose face was down. So much of it had been so good.

"So…" he said, mouth dry now that the time had actually come for it. "So how do we do this?"

Anya shrugged. "Someone just has to wish for you to be able to touch women."

Xander found himself laughing and couldn't stop. After all these years, it was that easy.

Distantly, through the laughing, he heard Anya saying, "So who wants to do it? You have to be precise with the language, you know, or else he could end up _always_ having to touch a woman, or have to touch _every _woman."

And he heard Andrew say, voice still so small, "You do it, Willow. You were there when it started. You should be the one to finish it."

Xander took his hands off his knees and straightened up in time to see Andrew retreating to the stairs and sitting down on the first step.

Something weird was going on. But he didn't have time to think about it, because Willow was looking at him, mouth half open and a question in her eyes: _Are you sure? Do you really want me to do this?_ and he nodded. Yes, he found. He really did. To be able to be in control of his own body again, totally and truly. To be able to do anything. Xander found that he was trembling.

Then Willow was speaking. "I wish that Xander Harris once again has the ability to touch women." Keeping it clear and simple, that was his Willow.

He didn't feel anything, no fizz or zing or feeling of melting (but then, he hadn't felt anything when it started either), didn't feel any different at all, and for a moment, Xander wondered whether it had really worked. Or maybe this was just some cruel joke of Anya's, getting her revenge on him one last time before—

But these thoughts were interrupted by a body slamming into his chest full-force, and then Willow was there, squeezing the breath out of him, and he gave a startled cry, and a cheer went up from Amanda and the potentials in the living room who'd been awakened, and they crowded in too, girl hands touching him everywhere, and Xander was laughing again. Even Buffy emerged, opening the door to the basement and poking her bleary head out, followed by the even blearier head of Spike (Xander had _known_ things were happening with them again!), and her eyes lit up and she joined in the hug. Even Anya threw up her hands and dove in, and Giles was taking off his glasses and wiping at what looked suspiciously like a tear. Xander felt as though he would burst, in the best possible way.

Through the tangle of girl arms and girl hair, Xander saw Andrew disappearing up the stairs.

xXx

When he was able to extricate himself, Xander padded up the stairs. He found Andrew in the upstairs bathroom, tucked into a ball on the rug in front of the shower.

Xander kneeled down, touched Andrew's shoulder. "Hey, what's up?"

Andrew's voice was muffled. "I think it's pretty clear what's up."

"Um, it's really not," Xander said, alarm creeping into his chest and his voice. "What's the matter?"

Andrew lifted his head. His eyes were bright and his mouth was set. "So you can touch girls again."

"Yeah," Xander said, and felt a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, stretching across his face. "I can." Then he realized. "But you're not happy about that."

Andrew sniffed. "Well, would you be, if I could touch girls?"

"Andrew," Xander said, sitting back on his heels. "You _can_ touch girls."

"But I don't want to," Andrew said, looking intensely into Xander's eyes. "But you do. And now you can."

Suddenly, Xander realized what was happening. He leaned forward, took Andrew's face in both his hands, and held it tenderly. "The only one I want to touch is _you_," he said. "And I'm counting all genders and sexes and species in that statement."

Andrew peeked up and met his eyes. "Really?" he asked.

Xander pressed their foreheads together. "Really."

And there on the bathroom floor, leaning back against the bathtub, they kissed. There was no more time for fighting.

They had a world to save, after all.

And they would face the end, together.


End file.
